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Bridging the skills deficit, a major challenge to the employment sector

CHENNAI: Two significant congregations in Chennai last week addressed some of the major concerns confronting not just the education system, but also the employment sector in the country. In fact, one of them looked at it from a South Asian perspective as it were, with Sri Lanka also figuring in the discussions.

No less a person than former President Abdul Kalam singled out the theme that stuck for most of the week — the skills deficit among students passing out of educational institutions at the school and college levels. Mr. Kalam went so far as to say that 53 per cent of employed youth suffer some degree of skill deprivation and the others posed the problem of ‘unemployability.’ One was the national conference of Vice-Chancellors from across the country, and the other, a British Council sponsored seminar on the use of English. Whatever the language policy of a country or State, it was clear that proficiency in English was imperative in the realm of employment in the era of globalisation. Though the trend, academics felt, was towards education in schools through the mother tongue as the medium of instruction, all of them agreed that a sound working knowledge of English, with conversational and writing abilities, was essential for ‘employability.’

National Association of Software and Service Companies Chairman Lakshmi Narayanan, who spoke to the Vice-Chancellors at length, stressed on the need to raise the bar in colleges and universities. He made it clear that the way forward was to empower the universities and colleges with greater autonomy and flexibility in terms of curriculum and faculty. The focus had to turn to "employability," which meant turning out graduates with better skills and relevance to the job market.

Some of the Vice-Chancellors endorsed this view, but argued that deemed universities and Autonomous colleges were more dominant in the southern States.

Others were just catching on to this trend. But these were not the only solutions. In fact, they also led to complaints of commercialisation of higher education. So, a certain degree of balance and regulation becomes necessary.

That sparked a debate on the regulatory mechanism in vogue in the country. Here again, there was a near consensus among academics that regulatory bodies such as the University Grants Commission, the All India Councils for Technical Education, as well as Medical Education, were not playing a useful role. Aside from the charges of politicisation of these bodies, academics called for a transparent system of inspection and accreditation of educational institutions so that parents and students could easily figure out the status of these colleges in terms of infrastructure and academic standards.

Two important issues came to the fore — shortage of teaching faculty and better interface between industry and institutes.

Some of the Vice-Chancellors who were here say that the retirement age has been relaxed for teachers/professors; every encouragement is being given to them to take up research work or come out with publications; part time faculty have been sourced from industry.

Yet, there appears to be a substantial shortage of qualified hands.

This is especially true in the case of new and emerging areas including nano science, biotechnology and specialised sciences.

They want industry to take a more active role in providing qualified faculty to make the courses more relevant and the passing students more employable.

Some of the Vice-Chancellors feel that even specialised or tailor-made courses can be launched for an industry/sector in a partnership programme.

Similarly, they seek closer interaction with industry to conduct refresher courses for faculty members to update them on developments in their respective fields.

On the question of industry-institute partnership, the view from the academic side is that it has been talked of for a long time, but only a few success stories have emerged.

It may be possible for regional bodies of the apex chambers such as the Confederation of Indian Industry, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India to create permanent links between local industries and the universities or colleges so that a continuous interaction could take place.

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