LAST WEEK WE ASKED:
Do you think that companies, by launching sector specific courses, can make good the gap between academia and industry?
BEST RESPONSE
Today, we see a significant gap between the industry demand for niche roles and supply of the same. Across B-schools, very few tend to meet these niche requirements of industry. It is high time companies took initiative themselves and launched sector-specific courses to make up for the existing gap. Past is the evidence that academic institutions have altered their approach to meet the demands of industry. And once industry starts these courses, institutions will wake up, come out of the complacent mode and contribute to meet the niche requirements of industry which are currently overlooked in the race of placement figures.
-Varun Saxena, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai.
OTHER RESPONSE
Process-oriented training would develop professional competence and methods expertise. This develops the ability to implement knowledge for solving vocational tasks, social competence and individual competence. These spheres of competence require different specificity for different study courses. Of course, the qualification profiles must be different for doctors, lawyers, economists, engineers and philosophers. It is though important to formulate qualification profiles considering these spheres of competence. At the same time, it is important to define the profiles taking into account the requirements of vocational tasks and to watch the changes of the labour markets.
-A Bhuvana Bhimaiah, Alagappa University, Bangalore
There are a number of unemployed graduates in India, one of the reasons for which is unemployability. A man can go to work only if it is according to his abilities and the man is according to the work. There is a large gap between academic knowledge and industry . So, the step taken in this regard can be useful to reduce this gap to some extent. This step is beneficial to both employees as well as employers. Employees can get job that suit them and are capable of performing the job in the best way and employers will get most suitable employees.
-Nikita Verma, Roorkee Engineering and Management Technology Institute, Shamli, Muzaffarnagar.
The results are mixed. On the one hand, sector-specific MBA provides student the expertise on the subject, help prove themselves and allow them opt for a specific domain of their choice rather than taking a holistic lessons. On the other hand, their knowledge base gets narrowed owing to learning about a particular sector. Moreover, at the top level in organisations, general expertise coupled with industry experience and a wide perspective in strategy is more important these days. In the end sector specific MBA may be producing 'frog-in-the-well' managers.
-Nilaya Mitsah Shanker, Shri Ram Swaroop Memorial College Of Engineering And Management (SRMCEM), Lucknow.
India has a dismal figure of employable graduates. For IT graduates NASSCOM puts the figure at 25%. Similar stark gaps exist in other fields as well making it imperative that educational institutions revise their curriculum and make it industry oriented. For an employer to hire a fresh graduate and then train him is a frustrating period and a considerable strain on his resources. Active involvement of the industry with the academia will help produce readily employable candidates better oriented to work in the industry, thus creating a win-win situation for all stakeholders.
-Rahul Gautam, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT-D).
Your responses should reach us at edu@business-standard.com by Monday evening every week. Please ensure that your responses do not exceed 100 words. Avoid attachments and email your full name, institute's name, batch and complete mailing address. The student who gives the 'Best Response' will be awarded Rs 500.
THIS WEEK'S QUESTION: Do you think by raising the cut-offs, institutes are becoming demanding by the day?
