The Hindu Business Line : Industry-academia-student: What ails the interface?

The right perspective: The primary role of an institution of higher learning is to create and propagate knowledge. Unfortunately, many institutions have instead taken upon themselves the role of employment exchanges, serving as the battleground on which talent wars are fought.

Ganesh Chella

What you measure is what you get — an old and trusted adage in the world of quality in particular and management in general.

In the many years of industry–academia-student interface, educational institutions have focused on a single measure of success — campus placements, while students have focused on a single measure of success — the pay they receive in their first job, and industry has also focused on a single measure of success — their ranking on campus.

These measures served the interests of all the stakeholders as long as the economy was growing well. As we begin to experience the lag effects of the global slowdown, the futility of these measures is becoming evident. Industry does not want to visit campuses, placements are not happening with as much momentum and discussions about pay are irrelevant.

The current downturn has redefined students’ industry preferences, organisations’ staffing strategies and perhaps academia’s selection processes. It is evident that the roles of and relationships between academia, industry and students has over the years sadly deteriorated from being a trusted, balanced and respectful long-term partnership to a purely commercial relationship.

Is this not the right time to re-examine the expectations, roles and responsibilities that the stakeholders have towards one another and find more sustainable ways of shaping the future?

The primary role of an institution of higher learning is to create and propagate knowledge. To do this, they need to create knowledge, keep this knowledge aligned to emerging realities, develop the appropriate tools and means to disseminate this knowledge (like case studies, research publications) and ensure that their faculty is competent and can inspire and facilitate adult learning. Most academic institutions, would score very badly on these dimensions.

Given the competition among educational institutions and the demand for fresh talent, educational institutions have instead taken upon themselves a role that they should never have — that of an employment exchange, serving as the battleground on which talent wars are fought. As a result, students have come to believe that if they find their way into an educational institution, they will find a job. By emphasising jobs and entry pay, educational institutions have tacitly propagated the value of greed and quick wealth over anything else.

In trying to find jobs, educational institutions have focused on branding and positioning instead of creating and propagating knowledge. History, however, tells us that brand perception and placement opportunities have always been a by-product of an educational institution’s greatness and not the result of deliberate efforts.

‘Job ready’ or ‘industry ready’

Most importantly, in the garb of industry interface, educational institutions have been led by industry to take upon themselves the role of producing students who are ‘job ready’ rather than ‘industry ready’.

This is where we must understand the fine distinction between institutions of higher learning and vocational education institutions. Vocational institutions impart trade skills that make a person “job ready” and are, therefore, far quicker to acquire — a retail sales clerk, a mason, a sewing machine operator and so on. In these cases, the collaboration and partnership to produce students who are “job ready” is actually useful. However, industry’s track record in this has been poor. The penetration of trade skills in our employable population is less than 7 per cent and when the boom happened we did not have sufficient masons, drivers, carpenters, welders and other tradespeople.

However, when you create an engineer or a management graduate you are creating a professional who will adhere to globally accepted professional standards and will have the fundamental knowledge that will make him a professional for life and not prepare him for just one industry or one organisation or worse still only the first job.

Industry can support institutions of higher learning in this effort by helping them understand whether the knowledge they propagate is relevant and current and can be applied to real life situations and help validate, modify or change the curriculum to ensure alignment and help build a solid professional foundation. This will not only help industry but also build their reputation.

Instead, industry has been attempting to retain and improve its brand image and ranking on college and even school campuses by launching programmes that give it visibility and impress the young students.

Most importantly, industry must accept responsibility for designing jobs that help students apply what they have learnt on campus and for on-going investments in training to keep their employees employable.

When large numbers of young employees across industries feel compelled to study further because they have reached a career road block after just three years, it tells us that there is something seriously wrong about the foundational knowledge imparted, the design of the first job and, in general, the very transient nature of the relationship.

For all these changes to happen, academia should first do its job — create and propagate knowledge. It should also stop becoming an employment exchange or a powerless link in the talent supply chain.

Industry should be responsible and ethical in its interactions with students and academia and not be perceived as being an exploitative, selfish partner in the relationship.

The labour market will keep seeing ups and downs. This cannot alter the long-term commitment that industry has towards academic institutions and the commitment academic institutions have towards students and industry. We must also go beyond the simplistic measures of pay, jobs and ranks and look at much more meaningful ways of measuring the success of the relationship.

If we do not do any of these, the ultimate sufferer is the student who is not only left with poor fundamental knowledge but also the short-term threat of unemployability and the long-term threat of unsustainable career prospects.

(The writer is the founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR consulting firm. He is also the co-founder of the Executive & Business Coaching Foundation India Ltd. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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