The Country Needs a Flexible Academic Calendar

The Country Needs a Flexible Academic Calendar

Even though India is well equipped with approximately 700 Universities and more than 35,000 higher educational institutions, the number of Indian entries in the world ranking of universities are considerably a smaller amount. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings of 2013 - 14, there was not even a single Indian University or Institution in the Top 200 list. On the other side, American Universities and UK Universities dominated the lists. While, many reputed universities from these countries widening their wings back to India, it is evident that the country does not possess any shortage of talent. Still, falls short of achieving the global reputation. 

Unlike universities in the U.S. and UK, the backbone of majority higher educational institutions in the country is a mulish academic calendar evolved from an antique syllabus of affiliated university. The unchanged scenarios in the higher education sector resulting in a routine production of fresh graduates who are more bookish by birth. However, the need of the industry is out of the box thinkers who have definite amount of real time experience while graduating from the college. Many colleges lack exact awareness of what is really happening in the industry and thus, the gap between industries and institute widens day by day. Today's industries are very dynamic and trends here may even change on a daily basis. With an aim of inculcating the changes that are happening out in the industry, many colleges have people from industry in their academic counsel to prepare the course curriculum accordingly. However, the changes are not reflected in the curriculum regularly. 

Recently, in a panel discussion hosted by one of the prominent institutes in the country, the foremost point of discussion was the flexibility of academic calendar in Indian institutions. In the long discussion, one of the drawbacks that was pointed out by several industry colleagues and academicians was about the obdurate mentality of colleges to stick on to their academic calendar. This does not simply pull the entire education system backwards but also limits the student's chances of gaining much needed real time project experiences from major companies around them. As per the academic calendar of majority of the engineering institutions in the country, students are permitted to do their final year academic projects in their eighth semester, which starts from January and ends at June. There is no such rule that every company should offer internship to students during this period. This has led the students to use their personal contacts to find some companies to finish their internship for the sake of completing the course. 

The institutions need to understand the fact that the industry is very dynamic and it may even change on a daily basis. A continuous interaction with industry professionals is the only way for colleges to understand exactly what the industry needs. In reality, only few colleges in India keep this in mind and act in view of that. Those who have understood the fact have made the necessary provisions for students to undergo internships whenever the industry requires them as the first step toward narrowing the gap. In that sense, for betterment of students in the country, every college and MHRD must necessitate the university to change their syllabus by infusing the changes in the industry frequently, which will further encourage the colleges to make a flexible academic calendar. 

As a part of improving the academic excellence of students, few years back NASSCOM proposed a major change in the academic calendar of universities and institutes. They suggested the engineering institutes to conduct all placements at the end of the eighth semester. For the industry, it was a welcoming decision as it has been observing that an early placement in the seventh semester can negatively influence the student's final semester studies. Unfortunately, most universities did not accept the proposal. However, it left a message on how a flexible academic calendar can influence the academic excellence and employability of students.

There are many colleges and universities in the country, that are always thriving to do better than what they were doing in the past. Most of them are bound by the university rules, which limit the colleges to make their own changes for the betterment of their students. To eradicate this, there should be a substantial effort from the grass root level. Universities need make more alignment with the industry. This will definitely result in a huge growth in terms of student's potential and the employability. With the combined effort and visibility that universities and students can create for themselves will amount to something that will ultimately benefit the country. 

@DinuNanjappa

The above blog was originally published by Higher Education Review and they own the entire content. Check this link below to visit the original content.

http://www.theher.in/magazine/the-country-need-a-flexible-academic-calendar-LPBD701849046.html

Campus Recruitment in India – Shift in Focus?

Campus Recruitment in India – Shift in Focus?

Campus Recruitment in India is no more the conventional method of hiring fresh graduates from colleges and assigning them to any generic work depending on the current business demand.  This program has come a long way and the organizations have been finding it changing in the past few years. For past few decades, most of the major companies in India have been actively going to colleges and made their presence every year.  Since there was no scarcity for the supply of fresh graduates, the effort was mostly about hiring and achieving the numbers.  Every company had exclusive training programs for these graduates and they were trained only to attain the knowledge, skills purely based on the immediate need.

Over a period of time, as the market transformed and matured, organizations have started to realize that it is time to hire graduates from colleges that have skills and talent what is required to match the requirements of the end customers.  Customer is the key in any business and this is true in every sense.  Organizations are now in a spree to hire the best talent from colleges that are productive without lengthy training or coaching. More efforts are made to hire those who are fast learners, understand what the customer needs and come up with solutions using their creative ideas. Any smart engineering graduate can be trained to be a great coder or programmer, but one needs to be extra smart to be able to deliver what the customer needs with creative ideas and design thinking.  This is a game changer situation for any fresh graduate out of the college.  Being creative and innovative is not taught to any student as a part of their academic curriculum, but it needs to be learnt by self.  It could be highly challenging for any graduate to learn these qualities during the season of attending interviews, but the efforts have to begin from the day they start their courses. Faculty, alumni and the industry stakeholders play a huge role in shaping the career of a student in the required direction.

Organizations give high emphasis for the quality of hires they make.  Most product engineering companies do not have new hire training programs that last for months. They do it only for a few days or weeks – not more than that. One of the reasons for this could be the fact that these organizations believe that they have already identified the best college graduates and they do not need long-duration training  These graduates are expected to deliver as early as possible and most of their training would happen on the job. The expectations from them will be sky-high and sometimes they are under pressure to work in a ‘no excuse environment’.  Also, these graduates typically work with teams spreading across countries and the atmosphere here is purely global. Their deliverable and performances are assessed and compared with their global colleagues and this is a massive exposure to any college graduate. Generally, most of the product engineering companies will not treat their college graduates as ‘second class citizens’, but they are treated at par with the senior colleagues in the team and they equally contribute to the success of their respective teams and the organization.

In order to find a right match for the right role, most organizations have been coming up with ideas and initiatives to engage with students starting from their earlier years of their graduation. Companies have started believing that it may not be great idea to engage with colleges and students only during the season of campus interviews, but they see advantage in doing this much early. It could be a good idea for organizations to start building relationships with selected colleges and engage with the students throughout their semesters thus adding value to their personality development as well. This may happen through coaching them through workshops, guest lectures, mentoring, ambassador programs, offering internships, projects on short & long term etc. It could also happen through continuous engagement with the key faculty members and giving them incites about what the industry looks for in a graduate and how these faculty group can help shaping these students for the respective industries to be the future leaders. Apart from the organizational focus specific to industry and customer, each organization must have a goal towards the society and this can be achieved by contributing to the welfare of a college graduate in million ways.

SAP Techniversity 2012 – A Dream Come True!

 

SAP Techniversity 2012 – A Dream Come True!

The World now knows or heard of SAP’s mega event for the student community – SAP Techniversity 2012 – which was held in Bangalore this November 26^th.  One may ask what’s so special about this Techniversity – one more marketing campaign that any major company would do, an event just to showcase company’s strength, or what’s it?  The answer is – it was SAP’s new baby called Techniversity and the focus was only the “Students”.

The 5 pillars of the event were Education, Inspiration, Innovation, Career and Excitement. First of its kind in India, this was an event focused entirely on the student community to begin their journey towards being part of the SAP ecosystem by becoming early adopters and brand evangelists.  SAP’s vision for Techniversity was to educate, inspire and excite the youth and provide them an opportunity to innovate for a futuristic career.

A full-day agenda for Techniversity was prepared to educate and excite the 5000+ students by exposing them to SAP’s 5 strategic areas – Big Data, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, and Application. In addition, students had the opportunity to hear inspirational keynotes from some of the great sports personalities like Viswanathan Anand and Suresh Raina.

Also, there was a session by the President of Flipkart.com, Mekin Maheshwari about the emerging trend of e-commerce and how students/youth can make use of the latest technologies to be the successful entrepreneurs.  A session on Ethical Hacking by the certified Hacker himself, Ankit Fadia was just inspirational to the students and they could relate to everything Ankit mentioned about – everyone being so much into technology!

Apart from the above, the sessions by executives of Google, IBM, Facebook and SAP about Entrepreneurship, Social Media, Career Enhancement, Gaming etc were the main attractions of the day with tons of knowledge being shared across.  The live performance by Simon Pierro, the Digital Magician took the audience to a different world altogether with his amazing skills of using modern gadgets like iPad and iPhone for a magic show.

With the participation of 5,166 students from 76 colleges across the country, SAP Techniversity was the largest technology event for youths in India.  SAP Techniversity was an enriching experience for students to step out of the comfort of books and learn more about the latest technologies from the best minds in the industry.

The huge success of SAP Techniversity 2012 was ‘Dream-Come-True’ for the Core Team that pulled out this event at such a large scale.  And this was the testimony of the hard work, passion, dedication of everyone involved in making this happen. The vision of the Leadership Team of SAP both local and the global level made this year’s Techniversity so successful.

Next year’s Techniversity will be at a much larger scale and the efforts have already started.  We now know the exact expectations of the Students/Universities and we are ready to over-achieve these expectations!

The Recap of Techniversity was telecast live via the SAP TechEd Live Studio just a day after the launch of Techniversity and the record of this interview can be watched below.

Kind regards,

Dinu Nanjappa