One of the concerns that industry experts have sadly and reluctantly given up cribbing about is the quality of graduates we see every year. Every year, millions of dollars are spent on training freshers, even those from leading institutions, to make them suited for industry roles. Exposing the glaring schism between industry and education, these training sessions focus on fundamental knowledge skills such as business communication, the use of basic applications and even worse, the very elements of their niche disciplines. Moreover, what the institutes need to impart, in addition to the currently required skill sets, is the knowledge of emergent areas in the market, in order to prepare candidates for lies ahead as opposed to a short-sighted education.
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For example, it has become an unfortunate ironic cliche, that the better part of software engineering graduates are poor coders and IT companies spend a considerable amount of time and resources on training the newcomer in the industry. Such is the tragedy of the current education system, that given the mediocre cohorts that most engineering colleges churn out, today coding jobs no longer exclusively seek students of the discipline. Instead, often any graduate can apply for software-oriented jobs, to fill up the gap in quality that the engineering graduate fails to fulfil.
What appals the company management is that several candidates, despite a stellar academic background, are deficient in basic skills. While the alarming scenario calls for action in terms of a bottom-up approach for the most effective results in human capital terms but for the meanwhile higher education institutions need to provide a stop-gap approach.
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As a breath of fresh air and as an answer to the concerns ailing the industry and the academia alike, NEP (New Education Policy) 2022 has sought to codify the need to bring an industry-specific skill set to education. As per the new policy, industry leaders can be directly associated with the courses as consultants on the curriculum and as teaching staff. This much-needed action is but a step towards curing a single symptom of a complex disease: merely grooming for the current practices.
In order to prepare students for what they will be required in the future, it is crucial to begin by defining the key areas of improvement in the context of emergent trends which B-schools and engineering colleges need to catch up to.
An integral part of today’s jargon and perhaps an inevitable reality that has already befallen us. Industry 4,0 will require future management professionals to customise technical solutions for their fields, however, human-intensive or mechanical the process might be today.
Today, the world of finance is moving rapidly away from accounting and analysis. Fintech is the order of the day. Stock analysis, risk management and valuations, fields already heavily reliant on software now, continue to demand more complex, muti-variable considerations which would require increasingly advanced algorithms to compute. In fact, these challenging, number-crunching roles require not just run-of-the-mill technical skills but also advanced statistical and mathematical skills and perhaps further down the line the latest knowledge in AI & ML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning).
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Similarly, even the most mechanical-process-oriented industry such as supply chain management or manufacturing, are ready to reap the fruits of Industry 4.0. With the emergence of 5G, advanced IoT( Internet of Things) and robotics applications, the factory floor is about to see an increase in production speed. In fact, it might even be so, that due to sophisticated automation, today’s Operations professionals would be required to step into roles that were previously just about logistics management.
The Fintech and manufacturing industry serve as ample evidence that given the needs of the future markets, there will be demand for hybrid skills which no single discipline can tackle. In this scenario, one of the highlights of NEP 2020 comes to mind as the solution. The new policy has proposed frameworks for dual specialisations across disciplines which could potentially be potent combinations for the upcoming trends. Additionally, the policy states the need to regularly update the curriculum and provide the latest set of information through a multitude of techniques, including, MOOCs, ODLs, transferable credits via the academic credit bank and many more.
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Moreover, this proposed change comes with an emphasis on earning credits via research, industry-immersions programmes or other avenues that provide insight into the day-to-day work in the market, preparing students in a real-world manner as opposed to an erstwhile bookish approach.
Bridging requisite technical skills is just the beginning. In addition to a new-age curriculum and pedagogy, the institutions are in desperate need of quality control, be it self-imposed or in a centralised manner, in terms of teaching staff, availability of resources and overall industry exposure. Additionally, to cultivate future all-around leaders. Technical and business institutes need to go beyond mere engineering or economics-centric knowledge and instead focus on holistic development in terms of interpersonal and leadership skills.
