Indian academia not upto the Industry standards: Kiran mazumdar shaw

" Education In India Needs To Be More Skill - Oriented – Both  In Terms Of Life-Skills As Well As Livelihood Skills ”. Ou r Education system has to be changed equally with growing industries and market.

It's worse and it is also the case all over the world, including MIT in the US. The technology advancements goes simply too fast to cope.

Let's say MIT hires the best of the best in the fields of IT in March 2010 (now). In May those best IT people are suddenly second rank, because they released new versions and new technologies behind their back and they don't have the knowledge and updated study materials and the software and computers and new approaches and new methodologies are abacadabra for them. One year later they are teaching the students old, ancient and out-of-date technologies, which not many people are using anymore.

No, IT is not a Science, it is an engineering thing. Learning and keeping up-to-date is the responsibility of the student, not the schools. It is impossible to teach the newest and most modern technologies.

Go to the University and what do they learn? dBase II and III, C, Pascal, X86-Assembly, Unix, Linux, programming in Cobol, some modern universities teaches in Windows!! Hora! Amazing. I can't use any of them straight from school. And they have the guts to call them academics!!! I am not talking about India, because I don't know the situation in that wonderful country, but about most - if not all - universities in the world. And that 'holy' MIT is not en exception.

I saw young people buying a computer, getting the newest development software from an illegal download site, learn to program with it and applying for a job. It took them less then a month to learn it and I can use those people immediately.

That is what happens in Russia at the moment. Poor guys and girls manage to arrange a computer and download the Visual Studio 2008 and learn to program with it. They also learn Unix and Linux and Windows XP, Vista and 7. They also arrange a mobile device and learn from it as well. One month later they go to a company, get tested and are hired. Then they talk to the guy from the university, who studied for years and the student realizes that he has no idea where they are talking about.

In the UK, young people get a laptop of their parents and they download beta-software (like Visual Studio 2010). They learn how to program and when the software gets released (earlier even), they are already working.

When I need people (programmers), I prefer the ones who made efforts to learn it then the 'academics', who I must train (also that month).

This is because most of our education content is old and controlled by government run Universities. Many private Universities are quick to adopt their course content and bridge the gap between current technology and the institution.

Education administrators should have right attitude and believe in CHANGE. Sadly this is not so and most of them have stopped learning decades ago and are not updated.

Rewrite the course contents every 3-5 years to stay updated if not ahead.

Laxman & Kiran expressed their concern very nicely. What do we mean by academicia? Is it only the Engineering , Medicine or technology? Are abstract & applied sciences considered ? There is an art & commerce faculty. Feature debate was focusing on Engineering, medicine & IT lest forgetting those domain of knowledge acquition. When there is a gap found by Industry in the feed, they need to go for a gap-analysis & suitable-solution-deduced must be introduced to correct the gap. For example, Industrial organization (or association) can run a parrel course to bridge the gap between the academics & the industry. Just mud slinging on each other on the sphere of work does not give any solution rather attracts apathy.

Thanks Mr.Namrata Pathak for the referral.

<p>However, I have similar opinion in line with Mr.K.Laxminarayana Roa and Mr. B.V.Krishnamoorthy.</p>

<p> Why our Engineers, Doctors, and Technocrats &amp; IT Professionals are leaving India to abroad and in the world arena Indians have demonstrated their skills and capabilities. </p>

<p>I feel sorry to mention here that the talented students are unable to join the premier institutions in India due to their financial constraints. Our education system should aim to utilize all types talents in our country.

<p> </p>

Appreciate thoughts of Mr Krishnamurthy, 

Until open thought process is encouraged, intent and interest provided preference over tags and marks, we may not get better with mentors to show new paths. Imagine, a young researcher being allowed an open expression and choice on methods and tools to adopt, instead of being held by horns and mandated to follow what someone thought decades back as the only way.

I really agree with K Laxminarayana Rao's arguments and support his views.The statistics given by him tell the naked truth of Indian Academia and are absolutely true.We Indians have tendency of eulogising about some of our strenths and let our weaknesses be dormant untill it gallops our own successes and strenghts.Apart from IITs,NITs and IIMs the rest are hardly equipped to provide quality education but exist only for profit making and the curriculum is cliched and the methodology adopted is totally trashy.This is only adding frustration to youth coming out of these institutions.Unless,HRD ministry comes up with firm policies and regulates them well,India acedamia can't come at par

I feel what Ms. Shaw said is not absolutely wrong. We have to give creadence to her experience with Indian workers educated and nurtured here. We Indians have a wrong notion about experience. Psychological science defines experience as the amount of material change that has taken place in ones brain when one is educating of course that means academia. This is called 'cognitive schema developement'. Because of our skewed definition of experience no one developes this cognitive schema while in academia instead wiles away their time hoping to get experienced when in job and it won't work as the students dellude thenselves tol do it in work.

I feel students in Indian academia develope something called 'accomodation schema' where they accomodate everything that come by their way when they are in academia rather than develope their cognition schmea.

Also there is a phenomenon called 'area of proximate development' that is how much a person learns outside supervised skill transfer that is outside teaching oriented development. Ths I believe Indian students excel at more, though it is not sufficient as per the statments coming out from industry leadership.

One need to gain experience in academia itself and that is the only scientific definition one can accept not the non scientific definition we Indians conjured up to accomodate their pathetic academic situation.

Indian Education System has to gear up to the international standard to give India chance to compete with other developed & developing countries. At all levels, Curricula has to be modernised together with Methodology of Teaching. Learning has to become Fun Activity at all levels especially for children.Teachers has to be motivated to motivate students to learn & money is only one small motivator.Social Responsibility should be a big motivator for teachers. Society should accord high respect to teachers as was practice earlier. Overall Social Degeneration has to be stopped to revive Indian Education System & in turn, it will supply a Straight Spinal Cord to Indian People & will prepare them to compete with people of other nations.

Being in academia it is very tempting to oppose the argument. However, truth cannot be brushed aside.

First up, academia in this country does not attract top caliber talent, with a few honorable exceptions. Till recently, this had to do with the measly salaries doled out to those in the academic profession. Though the anamoly has been corrected to some extent through the pay commissions, compensation in academia is nothing compared to that in industry. On top of this many private institutions subvert the system by paying the teachers only a fraction of what is due to them.

Second, research in this country leaves much to be desired. Very few scholars are able to have their work published in international refereed journals. As an editor, I can share with you that over 70% of the articles that we receive are desk-rejected - they are not even sent to reviewers.

Third, Indian academics are fond of being in ivory towers. They do not come down to the ground level and develop solutions that have the potential to improve the quality of life. Thus we are found wanting in both discipline-based and practice-oriented research. As for pedagogocal research and innovation, the less said the better. Many teachers still follow methods that should have been jettisoned decades ago. The advent of PPTs has killed the spirit of inquiry and critical thinking that are so essential to the blosomming of young minds.

Apart from all this, academia requires passion - one can argue this for any profession but for academia it is an essential prerequisite. Let us touch our hearts and say how many of us in this profession are truly passionate about transforming the next generation. Let us be honest about the commitment we bring to the profession.

Having said this, industry also has a role to play. Whereas in the developed countries, even Tier 2 and Tier 3 universities and colleges have Chair Professors funded by industry, the situation in our country is pathetic. Even Tier 1 institutions do not have endowments worth mentioning. Industry needs to realize that a meaningful partnership between academia and industry alone can pay rich dividends to all stakeholders and ultimately the country. Perhaps the great entrepreneur who has made the observation can make a beginning by establishing Chairs in a few good institutions for carrying out specific projects that have the potential for the future.

I do agree with Kiran Ma'am when she says that Indian Academia is not upto the Industry Standards, as it is fully standing on marks, percntages and ranks. Indian academic system pressurises students to study for marks, rather than encouraging them to actually learn. As a result, we can see every year, hoards of engineers graduating from IIT and entering IIM. For them, the point is to study in the best institute in the country, not to study what they would love to. I may sound cliche, but our system does need some "Phunsukh Wangdu"-s as teachers.

The support is to strengthen the exisiting level of 10 to 1. There is no such thing like support or no support it's the level what we are aiming to. Sitting with our own current levels is not sufficient to buy the argument of the present question.

To continually improve is more important to raise the level of the institutions. We can't  shun the repsonsibilities of the educational socities who's role is most improtant in bringing the level of our institutions.

Let us talk in this angle to bridge the gap  so that some work can be done achieve the level 1.

ACTUALLY i AM NEITHER SUPPORTIVE NOR AM I OPPOSED. 

Why? well.....I am not sure that the academia has done enough to integrate itself in to the needs of the industry and support them. I also feel that industry has not done enough to support academic efforts. 

So it is very hard to answer this question objectively when the ground reality is not anywhere near. The point is the industry has the resources and the academia has the research apparatus. Industries should stop having their own R&D and instead identify a neighbourhood college and fund them to do the R&D.

Promote appointments of experienced teachers as Prof by donating a chair.

Share the experience of p[eople in the industry by allowing the time to teach in local colleges.

Identify your long term product needs and set up concept research in local colleges.

There are so many ways these two can work together.

Ideally speaking they should be on convergent paths but like all things in this chaotic country they are often on divergent paths.

absolutely correct, she knows the issues involved very well

I agree with the Madam. We have to improve a lot.

I agree - Kiran is right. The lack of adequate recognition, opportunities for path breaaking work and of course the pay packet may be the reasons why top flight talent doesn't prefer academia. There are obviously exceptions to this; and there are many more reasons why generally speaking, Indian academicians do not stand out. What fraction of Indian academicians, working in Indian educational institutions (that is not abroad) have been honoured with global awards? How many Nobel laureates...

yes i do support this idea.....our indian education shows interest only in theoritical knowledge.so is the practical exposure enough for students?????this is a big concern.we ourselves should have experienced this situation...it is apt to have a revisit on education system

While I agree in general Indian Academia is not upto Industry standards for various reasons, I don't think even our industry has really something to boast upon when it comes to path-breaking innovation. Do we have any Indian Company, worth naming in the World, to be proud of in Automobile or Electronics / Communication or Aviation or Material Science or Medical Technology or Manufacturing and so on and so forth in most other industries? Can you name few Indian Companies who manufacture a common device like mobile phone? 

Most of the recent Indian Success story is based upon our large domestic consumption, opening up of economy in a 3rd world country, Serivce Industry and availability of qualified professionals.

How many patents do our cos. file except few Pharma and Software companies? I think our indutry has to go a long way to go, without any kind of comparison with Academia..

Have you ever heard that the government ministers, Big Education Institutions, and Industry Senior HR people met and discussed what is required, and what is being done, and what can make things better?

All the Systems are working in a Ram Bharose style...

I fully agree with Kiran Ma'am.

Yes, for good part of my career, I have worked for dynamic & evolving companies and a little part of it with a private University.

My own observation – as an Academic Exectuve - has been that Indian dons are totally cut-off from the industry realities in that they are much too happy spending their academic brilliance in giving lectures, presentations participating in seminars, and work-shops and not at all inclined to spend any time in laboratories or partnering with industry in innovative collaborations, et al.

And as a corporate strategic executive, many times, I tried to partner with some of them for some or other development of technology, pilot projects, etc. but to no avail, as ultimately their 'joie de vivre' in speaches could not be translated into concrete and workable ideas, which is what is required by businesses.

I fully agree with her .  The time has come to evaluate methodology to ensure that Education and industry should b made as interdependent and allowing many engg colleges to show the world that India has maximum no of institutions has no meaning. i think we are going in the right direction and thanks to Mr Kapil Sibal for taking a bold move in 44 Deemed universities.

I don't really think the education system in India is upto the Industry standards...

Some of the courses and curricula offered by the Universities are wayy to out dated...

and the institutions are more concentrated on getting the students SCORING high!... rather than generating the innovation and creativity in them....

The interest in research is lackin!!

Now a days... more IIT passouts are seen in IIMs... i wonder WHY.... any one pinch me!!

i support the idea

I m very much agree with namrata. but now there is two issues now one is student and other is colleges. Now we can see we r producing no of engineers in a year or u can say in coming days there is one engineer in every home.Quality of education level is going down due to no. of colleges and every parent want there child as a engineer and they are doing all this at the cost of money.But they dont know money cant put techical things in their minds and students only taking interest only in passing nos. not learing thing. Yesterday i was reading one survey that companies saying that MBA professionals are not there levels in INdia.

academia not upto the Industry standards

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) is ranked # 1 in the list of world’s best Universities / colleges, and the standing that Indian institutes find are 26 for IIT Mumbai, 29 for IIT Kanpur, 130 for University of Delhi, 132 for IIT Chennai and then 200 for Anna University. Honoring 20 Indian engineers for their technical innovations is one thing but excelling in their field is another. We have a strong Politicians-Builders nexus where colleges / institutions / universities can be sanctioned and opened at will with less emphasis on academics thereby churning engineers who are lost somewhere in the middle, as truly pointed by CMD Biocon. To climb the ladders in the list as aforementioned, we need a strong Government-Industry-Academician nexus that would create necessary platform for taking the innovative ideas to the next level of success. On the lighter side, 3 idiots was an attempt thaqt could have serious meaning if one is to look at it from this angle.

I totally agree with madam. In India, in private sector it is not industry-government - academics. It is politician-caste or quota laden enforcement agencies-criminal nexus run the institutions. Is it possible for Goverment to enforce that all the educational institutions to publish their income and expenditure accounts for public scrutinity? Mostly all Indian engineerig collages are Not caring about new ideas new inventions...They are not prepearing the students as per as industries need..The old syllabus where most of the btech students are studying unneccesary subjects which has no relations with their branch..