The Hindu Business Line : VCs' meet seeks to forge industry-academia ties

Barely seven per cent of the graduates are employable and if this can be enhanced to about 10 per cent, the employable pool will go up substantially.

Hyderabad , Oct. 17

About 50 vice-chancellors drawn from four southern States converged here to thrash out common agenda that includes industry-academia cooperation to produce employable university talent.

The three-day event, which began here on Monday, has been hosted by IT-enabled solutions provider Genpact at their Uppal campus near here in collaboration with the Osmania University.

The conference seeks to highlight the growing importance of partnership between the IT industry and educational institutions and their role towards generating employable youth. This becomes increasingly significant due to shortage of skilled resources, especially in the IT and ITES sectors.

The Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, who inaugurated the conference, said the challenge is to make higher education relevant to meet the emerging industry demands. The perceived threat of competition from established foreign universities calls for urgent action plan on the part of all concerned, particularly the vice-chancellors.

This action plan needs to be aimed at restructuring higher education systems in terms of teaching and learning and more importantly in research and development. Of the total budget allocated to varsities, about one fifth must be earmarked for research and development, Dr Reddy suggested.

The senior Vice-President and Business Leader of Genpact, Mr Sanjay Goel, said, "At Genpact we believe in empowering the youth with adequate skills and knowledge to grow and reach greater heights in their careers. It is important to nurture a healthy industry academia relationship to sustain the growth of an industry and enhance the contribution of academia."

Barely seven per cent of the graduates are employable and if this can be enhanced to about 10 per cent, the employable pool will go up substantially. "As a part of Genpact's efforts to increase this pool, we have already collaborated with the Osmania University and Delhi University and recently with Rajasthan University and are open to more such partnerships," Mr Goel said.

Genpact has several tie-ups with educational institutes to train employees. They employ an array of training and development tools to address the personal, long-term and short-term development of employees. They expect industry and academia partnerships to yield good results over the next two-three years.

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