How Indian Engineering Student should be doing Industrial Semester

We have great Regulatory bodies of AICTE , UGC and Ministry of HRD etc who have all the powers to implement or suggest simple solutions for effective Education’s last mile : Make the student become employable.But let us analyse is it really being implemented……….????????that’s something to think upon.

And out of all do they understand the word called “ Empathy “ ?

First please see the beneath news report.  We are a nation obsessed with paper degree and not skill acquisition.Considering a typical student, the work during academics is only in the last semester of MCA or B Tech in the guise of some Project. So it’s a vacation before the final pass out when he is busy completing the cut paste Project.  So when he does pass out, he blames the campus for the Placement not happening.  Then he gets busy into CV pushing or running pillar to post for walk in stupid interviews

There are a lot simpler solutions like the beneath suggested to make the students become employable:

1. In the fifth semester work full time in the company approved by the campus as an Intern.  Intern Recruitment drive is a world wide practice as a part of immersion experience of real work place.  The students performance get the credit in their transcript also. They report back to campus what extra value in 6 months  of learning.  There is a sync in academic curriculum and industry.
2. This will be more successful when the Teachers in the campus have professional . Not those who have mere prefix of PhD alone to sound intelligent and profound.   But AICTE   rules are rigid.. And the Phd pursuit in Technical is very miniscule to feed the market of the serious Teacher.  The Phd for Engineering pursuit for Professional is again rarity.
3. The facts is the Engineering Teacher are paid paltry , so where is the charm for teaching as a career.
4. This would also reduce the burdens on HR of companies to search for the best talents, as by the end of the course they might have already zeroed upon their pick ups.
5. From the students point of view is also the work experience which is self explanatory in interviews.

I have been studying the best of practices in the Global campus and sharing the same with many that innovation like the one beneath can be done . Education without the last mile of Placement or to make the student become employable, is a cardinal sin

WIPRO has one programme of  WASE  WIPRO ACADEMY of Software Engineering.  There are many companies ready to explore the synergy and the campus would be too happy. Yet why is it not happening?? 

Call me at 9500047898 to give the candid reality check or can mail me at sunilv@sunilv.com for intelligent solutions

Best wishes

SunilV

www.sunilv.com

http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/nov2009/tc20091111_828204.htm

Computers November 12, 2009, 9:45PM EST text size: TT

A Work-Study Program for

U.S. Tech Students

  

Low-income kids can get experience and a degree in six years, with no debt and a job at the end, thanks to Workforce Outsource Services

By Steve Hamm

Many within techdom complain about U.S. companies that use cheap, offshore labor or guest foreign workers in place of domestic employees. Few are doing much about it. A noteworthy exception is Arthur Langer. His New York nonprofit organization, Workforce Outsource Services, is trying to provide alternatives to foreign tech workers, including those on H-1B visas, by granting scholarships to low-income students and placing them in multiyear work-study programs in companies while they work toward undergraduate degrees. “We have an incredible source of talent in this country that can work for competitive prices,” says Langer, a technology consultant and professor at Columbia University. “You don’t have to go to India for labor.”

The organization began as an academic project nine years ago, became a company in 2005, and is now expanding in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. So far, 120 students have graduated, and a further 65 are enrolled. Langer ultimately hopes to put thousands of youngsters through the program. He believes it’s at a turning point. “We have proved it can work, and we’re scaling up now,” he says.

Langer, an expert in technology management, began the project after seeing many young people from poor communities go to college but fail to complete degree programs. The reason: They are under intense pressure to get into the workforce and earn money, or they are averse to piling up loan debt without the certainty that they will get good jobs after graduation. So he founded Workforce Outsource Services to help students earn degrees without financial strain.

  

Motivated and Disciplined

Here’s how the service works: Young people are invited to a six-week orientation program where they meet in a group with Workforce Outsourcing Services trainers once a week. From that group the most motivated and disciplined candidates are selected. They participate in an intensive IT training program at a university and then begin working part time for corporations while they go to school part time and finish their undergraduate degrees. “The goal is for people to graduate in six years with a degree, technology certification, no debt, and a job,” Langer says.

Valeria Rodriguez, an 18-year-old from Somerset, N.J., learned about the program a year ago when she was in high school. “It was too perfect,” she says. She is now participating in a certification program at Rutgers University and working at Galaxy Systems, a provider of IT consulting and other services in Somerset. “It’s hard today for college graduates to get a job,” she says. “I won’t have debt when I finish college, and I’ll have plenty of work experience.”

 

The program works well for employers, says Steve Peltzman, MOMA’s chief information officer. He initially hired one of Langer’s students for the museum’s tech help desk. That went so well that he now uses other students to monitor the data center, which houses computing for the museum. One person with higher-level skills managed a software programming project. “You get all of the monetary benefits of offshoring and none of the negatives,” Peltzman says. “And you’re doing social good.”

Langer’s program is still relatively small, but if it grows as rapidly as he hopes, it could begin to do a whole lot of social good. He’s working on that—right now negotiating with people at the University of Missouri in an effort to get the program going in St. Louis. Says Langer: “We have to show the country this can work.”

 Hamm is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York and author of the Globespotting blog.