The Hindu : Karnataka News : Students should hone communication skills: expert

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Wednesday, Mar 12, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Students should hone communication skills: expert

Staff Correspondent

‘Only 25 p.c. of Indian engineers can be employed’

Manipal: Veena Kumar, Director of Programme in American Language Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, U.S., said on Tuesday that though India was producing 4.5 lakh engineers (as per 2006 figures), only 25 per cent of them were employable.

She was speaking at the inauguration of workshop on “Mastering the Art and Science of teaching Engineering and Research” titled “Master-08” at the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) here.

Dr. Veena Kumar said that India was the largest producer of engineers in the world. Though these engineers were good at knowing their academic content, they lacked other qualities. The Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology in the U.S. had set down 11 qualities required in a student. The foremost among them was communication skills. Indians were lagging behind in communication skills.

Critical thinking and problem solving were the other qualities required of students. It was up to the teachers to guide the students in a proper manner. For that to happen, the teachers should update their knowledge continuously. “Teachers should be life-long learners,” Dr. Veena Kumar said.

Pro Vice-Chancellor of Manipal University S.S. Pabla presided over the function. University Relations Manager, H.P. India, Vinnie Jauhari and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Prema K.V. were present.

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