By 2020, there will be 25 billion devices of various shapes and sizes across the globe, and that calls for more opportunities for young engineers. But one has to gear up for the industry requirement, and it has to start at the college level, says V. Rajanna, vice-president and regional head of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
He was delivering the inaugural address at the one-day Higher Education Conclave hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday.
He explained that the use of devices would bring in data explosion and called for more bandwidth. The present technology would not be sufficient to handle the technological boom, Mr. Rajanna said.
Look at futuristic models
According to him, colleges and students should look at futuristic models such as cloud technology, data management, and artificial intelligence, for which the higher education system had to be re-imagined.
“The teaching and learning processes have to undergo a drastic change by inculcating industry-aligned curriculum, more industry-academia interface, and digital learning,” said Mr. Rajanna.
Chairman of CII-Andhra Pradesh G. Shiv Kumar urged the college management to utilise the industry to bridge the widening gap between the industry and academia. He advised the management to bring in industry experts as adjunct professors to address the issue.
“Colleges should involve a person from the industry in the evaluation of projects and the curriculum should be an equal mix of theory and practical industry exposure,” said Mr. Shiv Kumar.
Quoting a McKenzie report, Prakash Menon, president of Global Skills and Careers Group, NIIT Limited, said that 80 per cent of the jobs present today would not exist in the next 10 years.
“And so, it is high time we changed our higher education system to see that the students learned the required skills to become industry-ready,” he said.
Ninad Kharpe, managing director of Aptech Limited, pointed out that higher education should move out of the straitjacket model to become more flexible.
“Courses should be like a playlist, wherein a student can pick courses from different disciplines from different colleges or universities,” he explained.
A number of topics were discussed during the panel discussion, and students from various colleges and members of the management participated with a lot of enthusiasm. The students also shared their perspective on higher education and quality of education.
The other panel speakers who participated included Piya Bahadur, regional officer, United States Indian Educational Foundation- Hyderabad, V.V. Nageswara Rao, director, AITAM, K. Sivaramakrishna, pro Vice-Chancellor, GITAM University, Ravindar Naik of TVS Motor, Prathap Haridoss from IIT- Chennai, and Ashok Immanuel of Christ University.
