industry – academia disconnect - the road ahead
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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead
White Paper
June 2013
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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead
© 2013, Sharda University
Acknowledgement
At the outset we would like to thank all the senior industry leaders, mostly from the HR function of
various companies, who took out time from their schedule and participated in the ‘Sharda University
Industry Boardroom Conversations’. The insights and details shared during these sessions form the
basis of this white paper. We once again thank you for your efforts and look forward to an ongoing
engagement with you.
Industry Participation and Opinion:
Amit Mathur, Head HR, Vmware
Murthy RK, Head Talent Acquisition, MindTree
Sailesh Menezes, Country Manager-HR, HP India
Rohit Agrawal, Head - Talent Acquisition, Informatica
Padmini Giri, Vice President - Talent Acquisition, ITC Infotech
Gerald A Menezes, Director – Human Resources, R&D, Alcatel-Lucent India Limited
Prashant Deshpande, Senior VP-India Software Labs, IBM
Mahesh Jain, Senior VP – Talent Acquisition, HCL Technologies
Rajeev Bhadauria, Director HR, Jindal Steel and Power Limited
Sushil Baveja, Head-HR, DCM Shriram Ltd
Blesson George, Head-HR, Jubilant Life Sciences
Arti Sharma, VP-HR & Admin, Schneider Luminous
Sanjeev Kumar, VP-HR, Moser Baer Power & Infrastructures Ltd
Amaresh Singh, Country HR Director, Alstom
Manish Chum, Head-Talent Management & Performance Management, Whirlpool
Sunil Bakshi, Head-Data Analytics, IMRB
Rahul Varma, Executive Director, IPSOS
Prashant Bhatnagar, Director-HR, Sapient
Sundar Ram Gopalakrishnan, VP-Technology Sales Consulting for APAC, Oracle
Sudeshna Datta, EVP & Co-Founder, AbsolutData
Monika Diwan, Head-HR, GFK
Sameer Walia, Managing Director, The Smart Cube
Neelam Gill Malhotra, Vice President-HR, CSC
Anadi Sinha, President – Group HR, Minda Group
Vittal S, General Manager – HR, Sonalika Group
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Sunil Ranjhan, Vice President GA [HR, IR & Admin.], Honda Cars India Ltd.
Kiran Deshmukh, Deputy Managing Director, Sona Koyo Steering Systems Ltd
Vijay Deshpande, Vice President -HR, JK Tyres
Vaishali Ahuja, General Manager-Human Resources and Administration, BMW
Chetna Malviya, VP-HR, Edelweiss Financial Services
Pallab Mukherji, VP-HR, India Infoline
Saurov Ghosh, Executive VP & Head - HR & Training Birla Sun Life Insurance.
Vibhash Naik, VP-HR, HDFC Life
Priya Khare, Director-HR, Fullerton India
Vinay Deshpande, Chief People Officer, Mahindra Financial Services
Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG
Ruchita Sharma, Head-HR, WSP Group
Sunil Goel, MD, Global Hunt
Geetanjali Shivdasani, Director HR, Mercer
Vikas Verma, Director, Aon Hewitt
Parijat Thakur, Head-HR, JLL
Satya Sinha, CEO, Mancer Consulting
Deepak Bharara, Director - Corporate HR, Lanco Infratech Limited
Manoj Shrivastava, COO, Homestead
General HS Bagga, ATS Greens
Brigadier Rajesh Malhotra, Amrapali Group
Aviraj Nandan, The 3C Company
Raj Sharma, Era Infrastructure
Luxmy Rajput, Premia Projects
*Names of the participants are in no particular order
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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead
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Table of Contents Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................... 5
1.0 Overview: The Skills Conundrum .................................................................................................. 6
2.0 Perspectives: Industry – Academia Interactions ........................................................................... 8
3.0 Industry – Academia Interaction: Ideal State Model ................................................................... 14
4.0 Industry – Academia Divide: Measures to Bridge the Gap .......................................................... 15
5.0 Notes ......................................................................................................................................... 19
6.0 Sources of Information .............................................................................................................. 19
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Executive Summary
Lack of availability of right talent is a burning issue that runs across all the industry sectors in India.
Even as millions of people join the workforce each year, the gaps in skills requirements and skills
availability continue to rise. As part of ‘Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations’, senior
HR leaders from a wide spectrum of sectors such as IT, manufacturing, automobile, BFSI, real estate,
infrastructure, and consultancy, voiced the same concern unequivocally. According to these experts,
these gaps are much more pronounced at the entry level where they find that most of the fresh
graduates are not ‘job-ready’, cannot be deployed directly onto projects, and require significant
investments at their end for training and up-skilling.
One of the key reasons for these issues is an almost complete lack of a structured and sustained
interaction between industry and academia. This disconnect between industry and academia is not
limited only to a few sectors or to a few institutions, but cuts across all sectors and exists even at
very fundamental level where in many cases industry and academia are not even aware of each
other’s basic requirements. The industry is of the opinion that the students mostly have theoretical
understanding of subjects, the curriculum being taught is outdated, the students are not aware of
technologies, software, and hardware that are used in industry, they have no or limited exposure to
corporate world, and are also found wanting in terms of aptitude and attitude. The academia agrees
that while bulk of these observations are relevant, the real problem lies elsewhere. The academic
institutions are struggling with a serious dearth of quality faculty members who are well exposed to
the corporate world. Due to limited resources, these institutions are not able to invest in creating
the type of infrastructure that a company can provide. Also, even if the curriculum is updated and is
made in sync with latest industry trends, the faculty members are not adequately equipped to teachit as these can only be taught by practitioners. It was also observed during the ‘Sharda University
Industry Boardroom Conversations’ that many of these issues, through well known, have not been
addressed in a systematic manner that could lead to a long term solution.
The ownership of bridging this gap lies with both industry and academia and they need to meet at a
middle ground. A structured methodology has to be followed where each company ties-up with 5 to
10 institutions and each institution ties-up with 5 to 10 companies to carry out joint initiatives. These
initiatives should cover student training, faculty up-skilling, longer internships, live industry projects,
joint research and consultancy work, new co-owned programs catering to requirements of specific
industries, and revamp of course curriculum. This will not only help institutions in providing asignificant value add to their students, but will also be a tremendous boost for the industry as it will
get ‘job-ready’ and readily deployable fresh hires with the right skill sets. This will go a long way in
solving the imminent skills requirement vs. skills availability challenges across industry sectors.
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1.0 Overview: The Skills Conundrum
According to the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a public-private partnership tasked
with funding and directing private skilling programmes, approximately 12.8 million people will jointhe job market every year in the coming decade. There is a huge gap in the skill requirement by
industry and skill availability, due to inadequate linkages between industry and academia. India's
demographic might - millions of people who will enter the job markets - is in danger of turning from
a power into a dead weight that will pull the nation down and slow growth due to lack of sustainable
and robust linkages between industry and academia. These issues are being felt across all the sectors
in India. A summary of these issues across various sectors, discussed during ‘Boardroom
Conversations’ is shared below:
Sector Key Issues Regarding Talent Availability
Information Technology
IT sector is one of the most important sectors for the Indian economy
with ~8% contribution to the country’s GDP and employing ~3 MM
people directly in 2013. The sector is already under tremendous pressure
due to the global macro-economic environment and the problem is
compounded due to lack of availability of ‘readily deployable talent’,
leading to cost escalations and dissatisfied clients. Recruiters view it as a
big challenge to find skilled talent in IT domain in comparison to
skyrocketing demand and this challenge looms large across all levels and
companies.
Manufacturing
Demand for skilled professionals and managers in manufacturing sector
will continue to grow but manufacturing faces stiff competition from
services and IT industries in attracting and retaining the workforce.
Shortage of skilled manpower and ageing older workforce haunt HR
managers of manufacturing companies as they are finding it hard to
manage and develop talent across levels. Another major challenge for
manufacturing companies is to attract ‘Gen Y’ for manufacturing jobs,
which is much more comfortable in doing ‘desk-based’ jobs in metro
locations.
Banking and Financial
Services
The talent crisis is threatening business growth in the banking and
financial services sector. As the global banking and financial services
landscape continues to evolve, the challenges intensify further.
Companies are rethinking their talent pipeline due to escalating costs,
pressure on top-line growth, severe attrition in frontline functions, and
intra-sector competition. The near future is expected to be extremely
critical for this sector in terms of Human Resources management and
lack of right talent can lead to a multitude of problems in the next few
years.
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Automobile
India’s automobile industry is one of the key drivers of the country’s
economy. The manpower availability in this industry is surely large in
numbers, but not in skills. HR managers are having a tough time in
finding the right talent not only in specialised function such as research &
development, technical jobs, and auto design but across the spectrum.
Other issues which are looming large over this industry are demand-
supply fluctuations and employers are finding it hard to manage rapid
skill upgrades at technological front for their employees.
Real Estate &
Infrastructure
As per Construction Industry Development Council (CIDC), there are 32
Million blue-collared workers in the infrastructure sector, with majority
being unskilled and the shortage of skilled manpower, acute. The
situation is no different for white-collared workers in this sector. The
sector strongly requires candidates with experience in land acquisition
(which is mostly localized), construction management, project
management etc. Based on the growth expected in the infrastructure
and real estate sectors, it is expected that about 83 million persons
would be employed in the construction sector by 2022. While the
demand for professionals is witnessing a hike, the growth of the sector is
getting severely impacted by the lack of corresponding growth in number
of skilled manpower.
Consulting
According to a survey released by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and
Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF), 79.2% students
would like to take up consulting as a career. Though many join theindustry due to the glamour quotient attached with the profile and
companies, recruiters find it difficult to retain the talent for longer period
as many employees leave due to a spectrum of issues ranging from work-
life balance to better remuneration in non-consulting organizations.
Thus, the sector witnesses a constant churn, which makes it difficult for
partners and CEOs to create and sustain a strong pipeline of readily
available talent.
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2.0 Perspectives: Industry – Academia Interactions
During the ‘Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations’, both industry and academia came
together to a platform to discuss issues leading to the current skills conundrum and identifysustainable strategies to address the same. The synopses of these discussions, done across different
industry verticals, are shared below, providing the perspective of both industry and academia.
Information Technology Industry
Industry Perspective: The skill-gap between what is required by the IT industry vis-a-vis what is
available in campuses is immense. Recruiters view it as one of the biggest challenges in finding
suitably skilled talent in comparison to the skyrocketing demand.
There is a consensus on the need for academia to focus on providing a strong engineering
background (base-lining of skills) in the first 3 years of the engineering course, following which, post
selection of the candidates for companies, educational institutions need to work in close
collaboration with the IT industry in developing the required skill for the upcoming job.
Today, with the industry faced with extremely small life-cycles of not only products and services but
of career challenges and trends as well, formulating campus hiring strategies to get the best talent
out there has become even more challenging for HR managers.
There is a huge requirement for engineering talent that IITs and NITs can’t fulfil and private
institutions have to come forward to bridge this gap.
Academia Perspective: To address the skill-gap requirement, there is a need for all course materials
to be dynamic and developed in close collaboration with industry, especially with regards to
technology requirement in the future, say about 4 or 5 years hence. Also, the industry should focus
on providing a common assessment platform for all students/institutes so that the technical and
logical skills of students can be benchmarked across the spectrum and the alignment of students
with specific types of companies (such as product-based vs. services-bases) can be ascertained.
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Manufacturing Industry
Industry perspective: The biggest challenge faced by the HR fraternity in manufacturing companies
is finding the candidates with hands-on experience or technical skills. There are almost no
institutions, which impart specific profile-based skill trainings, fine-tuned as per the requirements of
the organizations. Most institutions provide generic understanding of concepts during engineering,
which are not useful at workplace. Students are not aware about the latest machinery and software,
which are being used in companies, leading to deployment time of over 6 months in many cases.
There is a struggle in getting people with relevant attitude, value set and the industry mindset. This
has been an ongoing struggle and companies have tried to collaborate with various institutes, B-
schools as well as engineering colleges, to find the key as to how best one can contribute to the
design of curriculum that is relevant to industry expectations.
The manufacturing sector also has not invested much in positioning and branding themselves and
their jobs vis-à-vis IT and IT enabled services. The feedback of the students is that they don’t seem to
know what kind of life companies are offering. This results in lukewarm response of students during
campus recruitments for many companies in this sector.
Academia Perspective: What companies define as talent is a person who is absolutely skilled,
available off the shelf to get started on day 1 of the job. This is not going to be possible unless some
steps are taken. Job specific competencies and analytical & reasoning skills are being developed by
the academia but the diversity in manufacturing sector is very huge and the technology involved is
very diverse. Educational institutes cannot install all kinds of training units for their students and
industry should be ready to act as the force multiplier and provide the required resources to groom
students on real-life machines, processes, and software.
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Banking & Financial Services Industry
Industry Perspective: In the years to come, banking and financial services sector is expected to
change massively due to the extremely dynamic global macro-economic conditions, and in this
regard HR professionals are coming together to draw up an efficient road map for recruiting as well
as retaining the right talent.
Identifying the right talent is a key concern for which companies constantly have to keep on
innovating during the hiring process. However, retaining talent is also becoming a major issue as
even after candidates are given the right company orientation, companies face a lot of attrition due
to cultural difference, challenging work pressures and lack of employee motivation,
Challenges also lie in volume recruitment. Companies often fail to estimate if they have enough
number of candidates. Finding good talent, especially the front line sales people, in Tier III and IV
locations is a big challenge. Besides the challenge of having enough fresher candidates for front line
job openings, companies also face a lot of difficulties while performing reference checks for
candidates.
Relentless targets pressure is the main challenge in retaining the younger group of people in any
kind of sales role. Also, the gap between their actual work experience and what they are expected to
achieve on the job, adds to the complexity.
Academia Perspective: It is important to do initial investments and handholding to remove the
apprehensions about sales jobs. Companies should allow talent to come and perform without too
much pressure and slowly they will learn. By incentivising those who perform well, the right talent
can be groomed and retained.
While companies are slowly working towards different ways of hiring good talent and ensuring that
employees stay with the company beyond a year or two, this needs to be communicated well to
potential recruits. Educational institutes are the best medium to carry out this message to the
students. Also, expectations setting about the industry, nature of job, pressures of the industry, and
changing dynamics of the industry should be shared well before the final selection of students.
Educational institutes are willing to play an active role to facilitate this and also groom students for
specific profiles from first year of their education itself.
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Automobile Industry
Industry Perspective: Being one of the key drivers of the country’s economy and keeping in mind the
manpower intensive nature of the Indian Automotive industry, the challenges associated with the
industry are huge too.
Industry experts have voiced that companies is looking for more profitability and more productive
workforce, especially during the current scenario of slowdown. This means companies will not add
to the workforce and will try to get the maximum possible productivity from their existing
employees. Therefore the current focus is on capability building of existing employees.
The long term view is also that the academia should generate industry-ready candidates for
specialised function such as research & development, technical jobs, and auto design, which are
going to gain much more prominence in India in the next few years. Experts from the industry have
voiced that out of all engineers coming out today, only 20-25% are employable. There are so many
engineering colleges churning out so many young engineers but their quality is of questionable
standards. Availability of talent, attracting the talent and retention of talent are the three
fundamental challenges faced by the industry.
Academia Perspective: The reasons for this lack of employability is that colleges are short on faculty
members and students are not getting the kind of mentoring and training that they need to get.
There is a huge gap between what the industry requires and the skills of the students. Also, the
faculty, which is the only link between the two is not technically equipped enough. There is no
interface between the industry and the institutes, especially when it comes to automobile sector.
Academicians are also of the opinion that bulk of the students will become employer-ready if theirexposure to the ways in which industry works starts at a much early stage than it happens right now.
This is possible through projects, internships, industry visits, mentorships by industry experts, etc.
Only such deep-rooted and collaborative partnerships have the potential to exponentially increase
the percentage of employer-ready students.
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Real Estate and Infrastructure Industry
Industry Perspective: Industry experts feel that the major challenge being faced by the industry is a
shortage of civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers who have the required ‘job-ready’ skills that
can make then quickly deployable on the construction site. Most candidates not only lack the
technical skills but also the soft skills, which are required to deal with labour, customers,
Government agencies, supervisors, etc. in this sector.
Real estate is not able to attract the talent that they want because people have a perception that
the industry is very owner-driven and not system-driven. So, job-seekers are apprehensive of joining
the industry. Most candidates are not aware of the career growth and opportunities offered in this
industry, and therefore are not willing to join the industry.
According to experts, the following are the ten basic skill-sets required in a candidate to excel in real
estate and infrastructure industry, which they should pick-up during their stay in education institutes
to be much more productive on the job.
1. Ability to understand the tendering process and techno-commercial analysis
2. Ability to maintain a strong network of contacts
3. Basic costing of a project
4. Co-ordination with various departments to make sure the tenders are accurate
5. Basic understanding of construction techniques
6. Ability to understand resource estimation
7. Understanding of legal and contractual aspects of projects
8. Estimating man-power or man-hour needed for the project, number of labourers required
9. Ability to prepare technical proposals to suitably govern requirements integrated in bid
documents
10. Understanding technical specifications of a bid and converting them into material
requirements
Academia Perspective: Real estate and infrastructure, like any other subject, can be taught and also
understood by students, if adequate kind of training is provided. Most of the students, even from
tier II and tier III institutes would be able to deliver what companies want, if they’re given internship
for a year or so from the industry. Without this, almost all students will struggle to find their
bearings in this sector.
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Consulting Industry
Industry experts believe that there is a big misconception about consulting, which is impacting talent
acquisition and retention. When candidates join, they are attracted by the glamour of the industry.
But, after working in the industry for some time, the charm fades due to travel, deadline related
pressure, and competition and they start missing the work-life balance.
Students come with fixed theoretical concepts that they have learned in schools. They are not
exposed to research methodologies and when a client needs one to bring something new to n the
table, one essentially needs to do research. . This research perspective is absolutely missing in
students.
Experts have noted that the top three skills any successful consultant should have are:
1. Client relationship management
2.
Project management3. Sales and business development
From the skills perspective, companies are looking for people with business development skills,
analytical skills, out-of-the-box thinking, knowledge of technology, and research skills.
The business is waking up to the fact that possibly they need to align themselves with an institution,
train people, hire about 100 of them every year and put them across to various clients. Or, align with
a nodal agency such as National Skill Development Corporation, hire young candidates from Tier-II
and Tier-III cities, put them through training modules and send them across to various clients. These
are ideas that are now being mooted by the industry.
Academia Perspective: Since the industry is very hard-pressed for time, the approach they follow is
getting talent off-the-shelf. This kind of short-term approach would not be possible in education
because the skill requirements for different types of consulting assignments are so diverse that all
kinds of skills cannot be imparted during a course. Some basic and generic skills can be imparted,
and the leaders in consulting industry need to take the onus to facilitate the development of more
specific skills suited for a particular segment. If leading companies come forward to nurture talent
like this, they can then have the first choice to select the best from this talent pool and the ones left
behind can be absorbed by other organisations, especially niche consulting companies, which need
the talent but are not able to afford the training costs involved.
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3.0 Industry – Academia Interaction: Ideal State
Model
Industry – Academia interactions are required across students’ life cycle during higher education to
enrich the learning experience and make them industry ready. The model shown below is an ideal-
state model where all across the life cycle of a student (from admissions to alumni), there is a well
structured mechanism of interaction with industry.
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4.0 Industry – Academia Divide: Measures to Bridge
the Gap
There were two major observations shared by panellists during the ‘Boardroom Conversations’.
The key gaps between industry and academia are similar across different sectors and impact
all sectors equally
Although most of these gaps are well known, these have not been addressed in a systematic
and sustained manner by either the industry or by academia
The onus of addressing these gaps lies with both industry and academia. Both need to adopt a
structured mechanism under which each company ties up with 5 to 10 institutions (depending on its
capacity and requirements) and each institution ties up with 5 to 10 companies (depending on the
streams offered) to carry out join initiatives. It is of paramount importance that these initiatives
have complete buy-in from both academia and industry with equal contribution so that these can be
taken to a successful conclusion.
Measures to be Taken Primary Responsibility Secondary Responsibility
New programs as per industry’s
requirementsAcademia Industry
Industry should play an activerole in curriculum design of
existing programs
Industry Academia
Resource sharing between
industry and academiaIndustry Academia
Focus on longer summer
training/internship period and
projects
Academia Industry
Involving students and faculty
in research/consulting ProjectsIndustry Academia
Training of faculty and students
on technical and soft skillsIndustry Academia
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New programs as per industry’s requirements
One of the most important measures to reduce the gap in talent availability is to forge long term
industry-academic partnerships and create the talent today that will be required in 3-5 years time.
Thus, launching completely new programs in collaboration with academia as per industry’s current
and future needs will ensure availability of right talent when it matters the most.
Industry should communicate to academia about their most critical requirements and come-
up with a joint program to address the same. For instance upcoming sectors such data
analytics, cloud computing, and sports management have huge requirement of fresh talent.
Joint programs are the best fit model here as such sectors require more hands-on
experience than theoretical knowledge
For instance companies in inverter and battery sector require engineers who are specialists
in this field. However, no current institution seems to cater to this requirement as they do
not have the critical mass, in terms of both students and faculty, to carry out such programs.
Such companies can tie-up with education institutions to launch co-owned programs, which
will help them in meeting their requirements
As these programs can be launched across the entire spectrum of institutions, this will also
greatly reduce the dependence of industry only on tier 1 institutes. This will provide them
with a much larger pool of students and also increase the overall employability across the
spectrum
Industry should play an active role in curriculum design of existing programs
Continuous Industry – Academia interaction is necessary for developing an innovative curriculum
that is contemporary and relevant to industry. These adjustments in the current curriculum will
ensure that at least students are familiar with the latest tools/techniques and the industry’s
expectations from them.
The focus should be on developing curriculum that enhances not just technical skills but also
problem solving, interpersonal, and soft skills
Engagement of industry is possible by including industry experts in Board of Studies, which
approves course structure as external experts as well as through feedback from the industry
experts during campus visits
Usually it is seen that the private universities have a great deal of flexibility in updating their
course curriculum to make it in sync with industry
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Resource sharing between industry and academia
Resource sharing in a jointly developed program, which has industry relevant curriculum, will be
beneficial to both, industry and the academia in the long run. Many universities are now running
joint programs with leading companies in industry1.
Industry can provide the latest resources (such as software , tools, etc.) as currently being
used in the industry. This will not only ensure that the students are pre-trained on these
tools before they join industry, but will also expose the industry to a large set of potential
candidates, improving employee acquisition and retention
Students will get to gain a lot as it will provide a superior learning experience by hands-on
practice on tools/software , simulation and virtual labs
Manufacturing sector companies stand to gain the most through this as education institutes
cannot replicate full scale manufacturing infrastructure. Thus, most of the learning forstudents is only theoretical in nature. However, through resource sharing, students will get
exposed to the end-to-end manufacturing process, greatly reducing their training time once
they join companies
“Industry is willing to give out time. I can tell that for all the companies I have worked for. I
think industry and academia are waiting for the other to take the initiative, and so far both
are not taking it in a way it should be.” –Country Manager-HR, Leading IT MNC
Focus on longer summer training/internship period and projects
Longer internships will ensure right industry exposure and help students develop professional
attitude and habits
Most industry experts are happy with the idea of providing students with 6 months long
internships with their organizations as they believe that currently prevailing norm of 8-12
weeks is too short a time for the students to understand industry nuances
Longer internship period will ensure that students have right exposure to the industry and
are diligently involved in the project undertaken. The students can then be asked to
continue to work on these projects once they join the organizations, resulting in much better
deployment of fresh hires
The academic structure in universities need to be updated to incorporate these changes and
provide students with the flexibility of longer internships
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Involving Students in Research / Consulting Projects
Live projects/case studies make students aware of current trends and development in the industry,
which positively impact their performance on live projects later
Students will get an understanding of the practices currently followed in the industry and it
will also create research opportunities for both industry and faculty
It will help executives in testing some of their ideas and also get an understanding of the
quality of potential hires
It will reduce the time of deployment of new hires as they can directly start working on the
projects they have previously worked
Training of faculty and students on technical and soft skills
Both industry experts and academia agree that students should learn at least basic
engineering, management, etc. concepts in schools. This will ensure that the foundation of
knowledge is solid
Almost all companies provide 3-6 months long training to fresh hires. This includes technical,
soft skills, ethics, etc. The right time to provide such training is actually when students are
still in their schools so that the training can be embedded in the course curriculum itself
This will not only result in significant saving of training costs on part of industry but will also
make the students much more job-ready as they will be exposed to same tools, technology
and hardware on which they are expected to work on during their job
The deployment time for such students will be far lesser than the current scenario and this
will also lead to much better retention of fresh hires
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5.0 Notes1. Sharda University has created academic tie-ups with leading corporate for sharing of
technology, tools, software and faculty. For instance, Sharda University has launched MBA in
analytics in collaboration with IBM where experts from IBM will be teaching the cutting edge
analytics technologies to students. Similarly, Sharda University has launched training
program with Oracle University to train its students on latest applications
6.0 Sources of Information
‘Higher Education in India: Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17) and beyond’, Ernst & Young,
FICCI, Planning Commission GOI
‘Shortage of teaching staff and lack of new programmes stun growth of new IITs’, Mail
Today, Dec 11, 2012
‘Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations’ where the HR professionals and
leaders from various top companies had discussed the key gaps between industry and
academia
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