The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Madras varsity, CII launch consortium

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 13, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Madras varsity, CII launch consortium

Special Correspondent

It will help to bridge divide between industry requirements and availability of soft skills "It will help bridge divide between industry needs, availability of soft skills"

CHENNAI: The University of Madras and the Confederation of Indian Industry have come together to enhance the employability of students.

At the launch of the University-CII-Industry Consortium on Knowledge Partnership for Employability, Vice-Chancellor S. Ramachandran said the partnership would help to bridge the critical divide between industry requirements and the availability of soft skills among students.

A memorandum of understanding was signed by Mr. Ramachandran and R. Santhanam, chairman, Task Force on Skills, Employability and Affirmative Action, CII Southern Region, and managing director, Saint Gobain Glass India Ltd.

The university had implemented a slew of measures — including making spoken English a mandatory module in the university curriculum — to enhance the employability of students, Mr. Ramachandran said. The consortium would have the Vice-Chancellor as chairperson and representatives from firms, including Satyam Computers, TCS, Cognizant, Scope International and Sutherland Global Services.

"The students would benefit from the industry content and experience. Also, such initiatives would help companies recruit from the available talent pool, thereby reducing training cost and time after requirement," Sreeram Iyer, CEO, Scope International, said.

The higher education system had to strengthen its foundation in terms of quality and relevance to the global market to ensure employment opportunities. To facilitate this, the CII decided to take major initiatives to make the educated youth more employable, Mr. Santhanam said. The consortium would provide a platform for the industry to interact with the academia for increasing employability, besides catalysing joint initiatives to launch student development programmes. The consortium would assist the varsity in developing a soft skills curriculum, provide expert facilities for training students, set up an assessment process and institutionalise campus recruitment.

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