There has been an ongoing debate about the mismatch between knowledge and skills imparted by the educational institutions and what is actually required by the Industry. The industry blames the academic system for graduating students not being industry ready.
However, efforts are being made by Goa’s Directorate Technical Education (DTE) to ensure that the engineers passing out of the five colleges are ‘industry ready’.
One such exercise was done by active involvement of Directorate of Technical Education and Education Committee of Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry where 41 projects by the engineering students from Goa were discussed before the industry captains. The projects discussed ranged from design and fabrication of stone dressing machine to innovation on wheel chair for specially abled people. Business Network International (BNI) and National Institute of Personnel Management also extended its support for the event.
To break the impasse and make curriculum application centric, GCCI’ Education Committee along with (DTE) shortlisted 41 projects out of the total 120 submitted by five engineering colleges from Goa. These are conceptual frameworks, plans, ideas that could be effectively put into practice.
Chief Guest in this event J M Noronha who is the chairman of the Goa Public Service Commission while addressing the crowd of 300, mostly engineering students, said, “Never have an ego and always be a good listener. Your product has to be well presented as it is the age of touch and feel buying.”
Mr Noronha said, “This will help students as their projects will be appreciated by the industry. At a later stage such projects can be commercialised if it is helpful for the society. If commercialisation happens then the students will get much more motivated. The prospects of commercialisation and prospect of becoming an entrepreneur are the biggest takeaways from such events.”
Director of Directorate of Technical Education in Goa, Vivek B Kamat while speaking to Herald said that such events will help the students to become more confident. “These projects are part of their curriculum and if they get recognition for their efforts from the industry, it will surely help them and they will be motivated,” added Mr Kamat.
The Director General of GCCI, Ramakant S Kamat said, “The broad agenda for the Chamber’s Education Committee is to create a forum for academia-industry interface to understand and bridge the gap between industry needs and academic processes. As part of this process, the chamber has now provided a platform for final year engineering students to validate their project work through interaction with the industry. Under this platform final year engineering students showcase their project work to the industry which comes forward to help the students by way of direct funding, industry mentoring, advice on raising fund, use of laboratories, advice on project improvement keeping in view Industry and social needs and processing the patents. This interaction between industry and students also helps in making the curriculum application centric thus helping in bridging the gap between industry and academia.”
Chairman of the Education Committee of GCCI, Raghuveer Vernekar informed that there was always a grouse that education institutions do not provide the necessary skill sets through their curriculum. “There was a disconnect between the industry and the students. So, we decided to bring them together and we will follow through and handhold the students. Last year out of the 30 projects, 28 got sponsorship and we from the GCCI will try and solicit it, this year too.”
