Sakshi Education
If you come out of the Engineering College with a plain vanilla resume, you are in for a tough time, reminds A Amarnath Reddy, CEO Institute of Electronic Governance, Govt of Andhra Pradesh.
How do you view Engineering Education in India in the present global scenario?
India is in advantageous situation today producing a large quantity of engineers and even Obama has alerted the Americans about how India and other countries could grab their opportunities if they lose their focus on maths and sciences. But the Engineering Education needs a major facelift. The course curriculum needs to be made more dynamic. Industry electives should be a part of the curriculum. Students should be able to choose the courses they would like to take much like the Western systems. More practical oriented and application oriented and hands-on learning needs to be brought in. The AP State Council for Higher Education and JKC together are working on bringing industry orientation to the Engineering education using the JKC platform but I believe there are many other things that could be done.
What do you say on the Academia-Industry Linkup for improving the situation?
India should also try to bring in a stronger relation between the Industry and the Academia in terms of fostering Research as well. If you look at the American system, most of the companies are built around the good universities. For example, Silicon Valley has emerged from the research at Stanford or Berkeley. MIT every year incubates about 200 new enterprises. NASA funds many of the research projects and professors are necessitated to apply for grants to support their research projects. Such strong interaction needs to be fostered in the Indian system as well.
There are at least 10 committees that are formed and several recommendations have been made to address some of the issues and things are slowly improving at a pace that is rather slow.
What does the industry look for in students just graduating out of colleges?
Industry people always like the fresh graduates for one simple reason – they are less expensive. And the industry is very practical about what they look for in these fresh graduates.
Is Industry exposure essential for the student and what are the efforts of JKC in this front?
Industry exposure may be desirable but not mandatory. Very few students get a chance to interact with the industry while they are in college. However, students should put every effort to get some kind of industry certification or get into industry competitions. JKC has a lot of associate certification programs with IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and AutoDesk. The certifications can be done at free of cost or at a highly subsidized cost. Also, there are a lot of Industry competitions that JKC coordinates such as The Great Mind Challenge of IBM, The Imagine Cup with Microsoft, Campus Connect and Aspirations with Infosys, etc. A student who participates in such events and gets certifications is bound to have an edge with the industry.
What is the ideal time for internships?
Ideally and practically, end of 3rd year is probably the best time for a summer internship. Also, engineering students can try to do a real time project for their final year project with the industry. The only practical problem with the Internships is that the Industry folks do not always have the project managers with the necessary bandwidth to engage the students in the proper way.
Why are engineering students not opting for a career in research?
I believe there are several reasons. Firstly, India is not known today for its strength in Research on the Engineering side. Secondly, there are too many jobs for qualified engineers after their B.Tech and they are quite lucrative. And thirdly research is perceived by many as a career towards teaching. And lastly, there is not enough awareness and counselling that is done to the students on the Research and its opportunities.
Importance of soft skills for engineer...
Soft skills are important for anyone whether he is an engineer or a journalist or whatever. More so for an engineer in the recent globalized economy, the soft skills are hugely important as he needs to build applications with a team composed of engineers across India, work with customers across the world and where marketing plays a bigger role than ever before.
And one’s approach towards success?
Set goals and work towards achieving them.
Your advice to Engineering students..
Today, there are about 2 lakh engineers graduating out of the state every year. There are about 15 lakh students graduating from the country every year. If you come out of the Engineering college with a plain vanilla resume, you are in for a tough time. You need to add differentiators to your resume, lacking which you will face a tough competition. Realize that this is when and where you are setting a platform for the rest of your life.
India is in advantageous situation today producing a large quantity of engineers and even Obama has alerted the Americans about how India and other countries could grab their opportunities if they lose their focus on maths and sciences. But the Engineering Education needs a major facelift. The course curriculum needs to be made more dynamic. Industry electives should be a part of the curriculum. Students should be able to choose the courses they would like to take much like the Western systems. More practical oriented and application oriented and hands-on learning needs to be brought in. The AP State Council for Higher Education and JKC together are working on bringing industry orientation to the Engineering education using the JKC platform but I believe there are many other things that could be done.
What do you say on the Academia-Industry Linkup for improving the situation?
India should also try to bring in a stronger relation between the Industry and the Academia in terms of fostering Research as well. If you look at the American system, most of the companies are built around the good universities. For example, Silicon Valley has emerged from the research at Stanford or Berkeley. MIT every year incubates about 200 new enterprises. NASA funds many of the research projects and professors are necessitated to apply for grants to support their research projects. Such strong interaction needs to be fostered in the Indian system as well.
There are at least 10 committees that are formed and several recommendations have been made to address some of the issues and things are slowly improving at a pace that is rather slow.
What does the industry look for in students just graduating out of colleges?
Industry people always like the fresh graduates for one simple reason – they are less expensive. And the industry is very practical about what they look for in these fresh graduates.
- They should be trainable. In other words, the student should have an open mind and have the zeal and the motivation to pick up things.
- Must be trainable to have a customer orientation. A very important thing. All said and done, the employee depends on his relations with his customers. He does not want his employees to rub his customers on the wrong side. Rather he wants them to build a good relation with them. To this extent, the employees look for polite communication skills and clarity in thought and a good body language, etc.
Is Industry exposure essential for the student and what are the efforts of JKC in this front?
Industry exposure may be desirable but not mandatory. Very few students get a chance to interact with the industry while they are in college. However, students should put every effort to get some kind of industry certification or get into industry competitions. JKC has a lot of associate certification programs with IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and AutoDesk. The certifications can be done at free of cost or at a highly subsidized cost. Also, there are a lot of Industry competitions that JKC coordinates such as The Great Mind Challenge of IBM, The Imagine Cup with Microsoft, Campus Connect and Aspirations with Infosys, etc. A student who participates in such events and gets certifications is bound to have an edge with the industry.
What is the ideal time for internships?
Ideally and practically, end of 3rd year is probably the best time for a summer internship. Also, engineering students can try to do a real time project for their final year project with the industry. The only practical problem with the Internships is that the Industry folks do not always have the project managers with the necessary bandwidth to engage the students in the proper way.
Why are engineering students not opting for a career in research?
I believe there are several reasons. Firstly, India is not known today for its strength in Research on the Engineering side. Secondly, there are too many jobs for qualified engineers after their B.Tech and they are quite lucrative. And thirdly research is perceived by many as a career towards teaching. And lastly, there is not enough awareness and counselling that is done to the students on the Research and its opportunities.
Importance of soft skills for engineer...
Soft skills are important for anyone whether he is an engineer or a journalist or whatever. More so for an engineer in the recent globalized economy, the soft skills are hugely important as he needs to build applications with a team composed of engineers across India, work with customers across the world and where marketing plays a bigger role than ever before.
And one’s approach towards success?
Set goals and work towards achieving them.
Your advice to Engineering students..
Today, there are about 2 lakh engineers graduating out of the state every year. There are about 15 lakh students graduating from the country every year. If you come out of the Engineering college with a plain vanilla resume, you are in for a tough time. You need to add differentiators to your resume, lacking which you will face a tough competition. Realize that this is when and where you are setting a platform for the rest of your life.
Published date : 22 Jul 2011 07:43PM
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