industry – academia disconnect - the road ahead

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 Industry   Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead White Paper June 2013 

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Industry  – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

White Paper

June 2013 

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

© 2013, Sharda University

Acknowledgement 

At the outset we would like to thank all the senior industry leaders, mostly from the HR function of 

various companies, who took out time from their schedule and participated in the ‘Sharda University

Industry Boardroom Conversations’. The insights and details shared during these sessions form the

basis of this white paper. We once again thank you for your efforts and look forward to an ongoing

engagement with you.

Industry Participation and Opinion:

  Amit Mathur, Head HR, Vmware

  Murthy RK, Head Talent Acquisition, MindTree

  Sailesh Menezes, Country Manager-HR, HP India

  Rohit Agrawal, Head - Talent Acquisition, Informatica

  Padmini Giri, Vice President - Talent Acquisition, ITC Infotech

  Gerald A Menezes, Director – Human Resources, R&D, Alcatel-Lucent India Limited

  Prashant Deshpande, Senior VP-India Software Labs, IBM

  Mahesh Jain, Senior VP – Talent Acquisition, HCL Technologies

  Rajeev Bhadauria, Director HR, Jindal Steel and Power Limited

  Sushil Baveja, Head-HR, DCM Shriram Ltd

  Blesson George, Head-HR, Jubilant Life Sciences

  Arti Sharma, VP-HR & Admin, Schneider Luminous

  Sanjeev Kumar, VP-HR, Moser Baer Power & Infrastructures Ltd

  Amaresh Singh, Country HR Director, Alstom

  Manish Chum, Head-Talent Management & Performance Management, Whirlpool

  Sunil Bakshi, Head-Data Analytics, IMRB

  Rahul Varma, Executive Director, IPSOS

  Prashant Bhatnagar, Director-HR, Sapient

  Sundar Ram Gopalakrishnan, VP-Technology Sales Consulting for APAC, Oracle

  Sudeshna Datta, EVP & Co-Founder, AbsolutData

  Monika Diwan, Head-HR, GFK

  Sameer Walia, Managing Director, The Smart Cube

  Neelam Gill Malhotra, Vice President-HR, CSC

  Anadi Sinha, President – Group HR, Minda Group

  Vittal S, General Manager – HR, Sonalika Group

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

© 2013, Sharda University

  Sunil Ranjhan, Vice President GA [HR, IR & Admin.], Honda Cars India Ltd.

  Kiran Deshmukh, Deputy Managing Director, Sona Koyo Steering Systems Ltd

  Vijay Deshpande, Vice President -HR, JK Tyres

  Vaishali Ahuja, General Manager-Human Resources and Administration, BMW

  Chetna Malviya, VP-HR, Edelweiss Financial Services

  Pallab Mukherji, VP-HR, India Infoline

  Saurov Ghosh, Executive VP & Head - HR & Training Birla Sun Life Insurance.

  Vibhash Naik, VP-HR, HDFC Life

  Priya Khare, Director-HR, Fullerton India

  Vinay Deshpande, Chief People Officer, Mahindra Financial Services

  Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG

  Ruchita Sharma, Head-HR, WSP Group

  Sunil Goel, MD, Global Hunt

  Geetanjali Shivdasani, Director HR, Mercer

  Vikas Verma, Director, Aon Hewitt

  Parijat Thakur, Head-HR, JLL

  Satya Sinha, CEO, Mancer Consulting

  Deepak Bharara, Director - Corporate HR, Lanco Infratech Limited

  Manoj Shrivastava, COO, Homestead

  General HS Bagga, ATS Greens

  Brigadier Rajesh Malhotra, Amrapali Group

  Aviraj Nandan, The 3C Company

  Raj Sharma, Era Infrastructure

  Luxmy Rajput, Premia Projects

*Names of the participants are in no particular order 

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

© 2013, Sharda University

Table of Contents Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................... 5

1.0 Overview: The Skills Conundrum .................................................................................................. 6

2.0 Perspectives: Industry – Academia Interactions ........................................................................... 8

3.0 Industry – Academia Interaction: Ideal State Model ................................................................... 14

4.0 Industry – Academia Divide: Measures to Bridge the Gap .......................................................... 15

5.0 Notes ......................................................................................................................................... 19

6.0 Sources of Information .............................................................................................................. 19

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

© 2013, Sharda University

Executive Summary

Lack of availability of right talent is a burning issue that runs across all the industry sectors in India.

Even as millions of people join the workforce each year, the gaps in skills requirements and skills

availability continue to rise. As part of ‘Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations’, senior

HR leaders from a wide spectrum of sectors such as IT, manufacturing, automobile, BFSI, real estate,

infrastructure, and consultancy, voiced the same concern unequivocally. According to these experts,

these gaps are much more pronounced at the entry level where they find that most of the fresh

graduates are not ‘job-ready’, cannot be deployed directly onto projects, and require significant

investments at their end for training and up-skilling.

One of the key reasons for these issues is an almost complete lack of a structured and sustained

interaction between industry and academia. This disconnect between industry and academia is not

limited only to a few sectors or to a few institutions, but cuts across all sectors and exists even at

very fundamental level where in many cases industry and academia are not even aware of each

other’s basic requirements. The industry is of the opinion that the students mostly have theoretical

understanding of subjects, the curriculum being taught is outdated, the students are not aware of 

technologies, software, and hardware that are used in industry, they have no or limited exposure to

corporate world, and are also found wanting in terms of aptitude and attitude. The academia agrees

that while bulk of these observations are relevant, the real problem lies elsewhere. The academic

institutions are struggling with a serious dearth of quality faculty members who are well exposed to

the corporate world. Due to limited resources, these institutions are not able to invest in creating

the type of infrastructure that a company can provide. Also, even if the curriculum is updated and is

made in sync with latest industry trends, the faculty members are not adequately equipped to teachit as these can only be taught by practitioners. It was also observed during the ‘Sharda University

Industry Boardroom Conversations’ that many of these issues, through well known, have not been

addressed in a systematic manner that could lead to a long term solution.

The ownership of bridging this gap lies with both industry and academia and they need to meet at a

middle ground. A structured methodology has to be followed where each company ties-up with 5 to

10 institutions and each institution ties-up with 5 to 10 companies to carry out joint initiatives. These

initiatives should cover student training, faculty up-skilling, longer internships, live industry projects,

 joint research and consultancy work, new co-owned programs catering to requirements of specific

industries, and revamp of course curriculum. This will not only help institutions in providing asignificant value add to their students, but will also be a tremendous boost for the industry as it will

get ‘job-ready’ and readily deployable fresh hires with the right skill sets. This will go a long way in

solving the imminent skills requirement vs. skills availability challenges across industry sectors.

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

© 2013, Sharda University

1.0 Overview: The Skills Conundrum

According to the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a public-private partnership tasked

with funding and directing private skilling programmes, approximately 12.8 million people will jointhe job market every year in the coming decade. There is a huge gap in the skill requirement by

industry and skill availability, due to inadequate linkages between industry and academia. India's

demographic might - millions of people who will enter the job markets - is in danger of turning from

a power into a dead weight that will pull the nation down and slow growth due to lack of sustainable

and robust linkages between industry and academia. These issues are being felt across all the sectors

in India. A summary of these issues across various sectors, discussed during ‘Boardroom

Conversations’ is shared below:

Sector Key Issues Regarding Talent Availability

Information Technology

IT sector is one of the most important sectors for the Indian economy

with ~8% contribution to the country’s GDP and employing ~3 MM

people directly in 2013. The sector is already under tremendous pressure

due to the global macro-economic environment and the problem is

compounded due to lack of availability of ‘readily deployable talent’,

leading to cost escalations and dissatisfied clients. Recruiters view it as a

big challenge to find skilled talent in IT domain in comparison to

skyrocketing demand and this challenge looms large across all levels and

companies.

Manufacturing

Demand for skilled professionals and managers in manufacturing sector

will continue to grow but manufacturing faces stiff competition from

services and IT industries in attracting and retaining the workforce.

Shortage of skilled manpower and ageing older workforce haunt HR

managers of manufacturing companies as they are finding it hard to

manage and develop talent across levels. Another major challenge for

manufacturing companies is to attract ‘Gen Y’ for manufacturing jobs,

which is much more comfortable in doing ‘desk-based’ jobs in metro

locations.

Banking and Financial

Services

The talent crisis is threatening business growth in the banking and

financial services sector. As the global banking and financial services

landscape continues to evolve, the challenges intensify further.

Companies are rethinking their talent pipeline due to escalating costs,

pressure on top-line growth, severe attrition in frontline functions, and

intra-sector competition. The near future is expected to be extremely

critical for this sector in terms of Human Resources management and

lack of right talent can lead to a multitude of problems in the next few

years.

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Automobile

India’s automobile industry is one of the key drivers of the country’s

economy. The manpower availability in this industry is surely large in

numbers, but not in skills. HR managers are having a tough time in

finding the right talent not only in specialised function such as research &

development, technical jobs, and auto design but across the spectrum.

Other issues which are looming large over this industry are demand-

supply fluctuations and employers are finding it hard to manage rapid

skill upgrades at technological front for their employees.

Real Estate &

Infrastructure

As per Construction Industry Development Council (CIDC), there are 32

Million blue-collared workers in the infrastructure sector, with majority

being unskilled and the shortage of skilled manpower, acute. The

situation is no different for white-collared workers in this sector. The

sector strongly requires candidates with experience in land acquisition

(which is mostly localized), construction management, project

management etc. Based on the growth expected in the infrastructure

and real estate sectors, it is expected that about 83 million persons

would be employed in the construction sector by 2022. While the

demand for professionals is witnessing a hike, the growth of the sector is

getting severely impacted by the lack of corresponding growth in number

of skilled manpower.

Consulting

According to a survey released by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and

Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF), 79.2% students

would like to take up consulting as a career. Though many join theindustry due to the glamour quotient attached with the profile and

companies, recruiters find it difficult to retain the talent for longer period

as many employees leave due to a spectrum of issues ranging from work-

life balance to better remuneration in non-consulting organizations.

Thus, the sector witnesses a constant churn, which makes it difficult for

partners and CEOs to create and sustain a strong pipeline of readily

available talent.

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

© 2013, Sharda University

2.0 Perspectives: Industry  – Academia Interactions 

During the ‘Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations’, both industry and academia came

together to a platform to discuss issues leading to the current skills conundrum and identifysustainable strategies to address the same. The synopses of these discussions, done across different

industry verticals, are shared below, providing the perspective of both industry and academia.

Information Technology Industry

Industry Perspective: The skill-gap between what is required by the IT industry vis-a-vis what is

available in campuses is immense. Recruiters view it as one of the biggest challenges in finding

suitably skilled talent in comparison to the skyrocketing demand.

There is a consensus on the need for academia to focus on providing a strong engineering

background (base-lining of skills) in the first 3 years of the engineering course, following which, post

selection of the candidates for companies, educational institutions need to work in close

collaboration with the IT industry in developing the required skill for the upcoming job.

Today, with the industry faced with extremely small life-cycles of not only products and services but

of career challenges and trends as well, formulating campus hiring strategies to get the best talent

out there has become even more challenging for HR managers.

There is a huge requirement for engineering talent that IITs and NITs can’t fulfil and private

institutions have to come forward to bridge this gap.

Academia Perspective: To address the skill-gap requirement, there is a need for all course materials

to be dynamic and developed in close collaboration with industry, especially with regards to

technology requirement in the future, say about 4 or 5 years hence. Also, the industry should focus

on providing a common assessment platform for all students/institutes so that the technical and

logical skills of students can be benchmarked across the spectrum and the alignment of students

with specific types of companies (such as product-based vs. services-bases) can be ascertained.

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Manufacturing Industry

Industry perspective: The biggest challenge faced by the HR fraternity in manufacturing companies

is finding the candidates with hands-on experience or technical skills. There are almost no

institutions, which impart specific profile-based skill trainings, fine-tuned as per the requirements of 

the organizations. Most institutions provide generic understanding of concepts during engineering,

which are not useful at workplace. Students are not aware about the latest machinery and software,

which are being used in companies, leading to deployment time of over 6 months in many cases.

There is a struggle in getting people with relevant attitude, value set and the industry mindset. This

has been an ongoing struggle and companies have tried to collaborate with various institutes, B-

schools as well as engineering colleges, to find the key as to how best one can contribute to the

design of curriculum that is relevant to industry expectations.

The manufacturing sector also has not invested much in positioning and branding themselves and

their jobs vis-à-vis IT and IT enabled services. The feedback of the students is that they don’t seem to

know what kind of life companies are offering. This results in lukewarm response of students during

campus recruitments for many companies in this sector.

Academia Perspective: What companies define as talent is a person who is absolutely skilled,

available off the shelf to get started on day 1 of the job. This is not going to be possible unless some

steps are taken. Job specific competencies and analytical & reasoning skills are being developed by

the academia but the diversity in manufacturing sector is very huge and the technology involved is

very diverse. Educational institutes cannot install all kinds of training units for their students and

industry should be ready to act as the force multiplier and provide the required resources to groom

students on real-life machines, processes, and software.

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Banking & Financial Services Industry

Industry Perspective: In the years to come, banking and financial services sector is expected to

change massively due to the extremely dynamic global macro-economic conditions, and in this

regard HR professionals are coming together to draw up an efficient road map for recruiting as well

as retaining the right talent.

Identifying the right talent is a key concern for which companies constantly have to keep on

innovating during the hiring process. However, retaining talent is also becoming a major issue as

even after candidates are given the right company orientation, companies face a lot of attrition due

to cultural difference, challenging work pressures and lack of employee motivation,

Challenges also lie in volume recruitment. Companies often fail to estimate if they have enough

number of candidates. Finding good talent, especially the front line sales people, in Tier III and IV

locations is a big challenge. Besides the challenge of having enough fresher candidates for front line

 job openings, companies also face a lot of difficulties while performing reference checks for

candidates.

Relentless targets pressure is the main challenge in retaining the younger group of people in any

kind of sales role. Also, the gap between their actual work experience and what they are expected to

achieve on the job, adds to the complexity.

Academia Perspective: It is important to do initial investments and handholding to remove the

apprehensions about sales jobs. Companies should allow talent to come and perform without too

much pressure and slowly they will learn. By incentivising those who perform well, the right talent

can be groomed and retained.

While companies are slowly working towards different ways of hiring good talent and ensuring that

employees stay with the company beyond a year or two, this needs to be communicated well to

potential recruits. Educational institutes are the best medium to carry out this message to the

students. Also, expectations setting about the industry, nature of job, pressures of the industry, and

changing dynamics of the industry should be shared well before the final selection of students.

Educational institutes are willing to play an active role to facilitate this and also groom students for

specific profiles from first year of their education itself. 

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Automobile Industry

Industry Perspective: Being one of the key drivers of the country’s economy and keeping in mind the

manpower intensive nature of the Indian Automotive industry, the challenges associated with the

industry are huge too.

Industry experts have voiced that companies is looking for more profitability and more productive

workforce, especially during the current scenario of slowdown. This means companies will not add

to the workforce and will try to get the maximum possible productivity from their existing

employees. Therefore the current focus is on capability building of existing employees.

The long term view is also that the academia should generate industry-ready candidates for

specialised function such as research & development, technical jobs, and auto design, which are

going to gain much more prominence in India in the next few years. Experts from the industry have

voiced that out of all engineers coming out today, only 20-25% are employable. There are so many

engineering colleges churning out so many young engineers but their quality is of questionable

standards. Availability of talent, attracting the talent and retention of talent are the three

fundamental challenges faced by the industry.

Academia Perspective: The reasons for this lack of employability is that colleges are short on faculty

members and students are not getting the kind of mentoring and training that they need to get.

There is a huge gap between what the industry requires and the skills of the students. Also, the

faculty, which is the only link between the two is not technically equipped enough. There is no

interface between the industry and the institutes, especially when it comes to automobile sector.

Academicians are also of the opinion that bulk of the students will become employer-ready if theirexposure to the ways in which industry works starts at a much early stage than it happens right now.

This is possible through projects, internships, industry visits, mentorships by industry experts, etc.

Only such deep-rooted and collaborative partnerships have the potential to exponentially increase

the percentage of employer-ready students.

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Real Estate and Infrastructure Industry

Industry Perspective: Industry experts feel that the major challenge being faced by the industry is a

shortage of civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers who have the required ‘job-ready’ skills that

can make then quickly deployable on the construction site. Most candidates not only lack the

technical skills but also the soft skills, which are required to deal with labour, customers,

Government agencies, supervisors, etc. in this sector.

Real estate is not able to attract the talent that they want because people have a perception that

the industry is very owner-driven and not system-driven. So, job-seekers are apprehensive of joining

the industry. Most candidates are not aware of the career growth and opportunities offered in this

industry, and therefore are not willing to join the industry.

According to experts, the following are the ten basic skill-sets required in a candidate to excel in real

estate and infrastructure industry, which they should pick-up during their stay in education institutes

to be much more productive on the job.

1.  Ability to understand the tendering process and techno-commercial analysis

2.  Ability to maintain a strong network of contacts

3.  Basic costing of a project

4.  Co-ordination with various departments to make sure the tenders are accurate

5.  Basic understanding of construction techniques

6.  Ability to understand resource estimation

7.  Understanding of legal and contractual aspects of projects

8.  Estimating man-power or man-hour needed for the project, number of labourers required

9.  Ability to prepare technical proposals to suitably govern requirements integrated in bid

documents

10. Understanding technical specifications of a bid and converting them into material

requirements

Academia Perspective: Real estate and infrastructure, like any other subject, can be taught and also

understood by students, if adequate kind of training is provided. Most of the students, even from

tier II and tier III institutes would be able to deliver what companies want, if they’re given internship

for a year or so from the industry. Without this, almost all students will struggle to find their

bearings in this sector. 

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Consulting Industry

Industry experts believe that there is a big misconception about consulting, which is impacting talent

acquisition and retention. When candidates join, they are attracted by the glamour of the industry.

But, after working in the industry for some time, the charm fades due to travel, deadline related

pressure, and competition and they start missing the work-life balance.

Students come with fixed theoretical concepts that they have learned in schools. They are not

exposed to research methodologies and when a client needs one to bring something new to n the

table, one essentially needs to do research. . This research perspective is absolutely missing in

students.

Experts have noted that the top three skills any successful consultant should have are:

1.  Client relationship management

2. 

Project management3.  Sales and business development

From the skills perspective, companies are looking for people with business development skills,

analytical skills, out-of-the-box thinking, knowledge of technology, and research skills.

The business is waking up to the fact that possibly they need to align themselves with an institution,

train people, hire about 100 of them every year and put them across to various clients. Or, align with

a nodal agency such as National Skill Development Corporation, hire young candidates from Tier-II

and Tier-III cities, put them through training modules and send them across to various clients. These

are ideas that are now being mooted by the industry.

Academia Perspective: Since the industry is very hard-pressed for time, the approach they follow is

getting talent off-the-shelf. This kind of short-term approach would not be possible in education

because the skill requirements for different types of consulting assignments are so diverse that all

kinds of skills cannot be imparted during a course. Some basic and generic skills can be imparted,

and the leaders in consulting industry need to take the onus to facilitate the development of more

specific skills suited for a particular segment. If leading companies come forward to nurture talent

like this, they can then have the first choice to select the best from this talent pool and the ones left

behind can be absorbed by other organisations, especially niche consulting companies, which need

the talent but are not able to afford the training costs involved. 

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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3.0 Industry  – Academia Interaction: Ideal State

Model

Industry – Academia interactions are required across students’ life cycle during higher education to

enrich the learning experience and make them industry ready. The model shown below is an ideal-

state model where all across the life cycle of a student (from admissions to alumni), there is a well

structured mechanism of interaction with industry.

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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4.0 Industry  – Academia Divide: Measures to Bridge

the Gap

There were two major observations shared by panellists during the ‘Boardroom Conversations’. 

  The key gaps between industry and academia are similar across different sectors and impact

all sectors equally

  Although most of these gaps are well known, these have not been addressed in a systematic

and sustained manner by either the industry or by academia

The onus of addressing these gaps lies with both industry and academia. Both need to adopt a

structured mechanism under which each company ties up with 5 to 10 institutions (depending on its

capacity and requirements) and each institution ties up with 5 to 10 companies (depending on the

streams offered) to carry out join initiatives. It is of paramount importance that these initiatives

have complete buy-in from both academia and industry with equal contribution so that these can be

taken to a successful conclusion.

Measures to be Taken Primary Responsibility Secondary Responsibility

New programs as per industry’s

requirementsAcademia Industry

Industry should play an activerole in curriculum design of 

existing programs

Industry Academia

Resource sharing between

industry and academiaIndustry Academia

Focus on longer summer

training/internship period and

projects

Academia Industry

Involving students and faculty

in research/consulting ProjectsIndustry Academia

Training of faculty and students

on technical and soft skillsIndustry Academia

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New programs as per industry’s requirements

One of the most important measures to reduce the gap in talent availability is to forge long term

industry-academic partnerships and create the talent today that will be required in 3-5 years time.

Thus, launching completely new programs in collaboration with academia as per industry’s current

and future needs will ensure availability of right talent when it matters the most.

  Industry should communicate to academia about their most critical requirements and come-

up with a joint program to address the same. For instance upcoming sectors such data

analytics, cloud computing, and sports management have huge requirement of fresh talent.

Joint programs are the best fit model here as such sectors require more hands-on

experience than theoretical knowledge

  For instance companies in inverter and battery sector require engineers who are specialists

in this field. However, no current institution seems to cater to this requirement as they do

not have the critical mass, in terms of both students and faculty, to carry out such programs.

Such companies can tie-up with education institutions to launch co-owned programs, which

will help them in meeting their requirements

  As these programs can be launched across the entire spectrum of institutions, this will also

greatly reduce the dependence of industry only on tier 1 institutes. This will provide them

with a much larger pool of students and also increase the overall employability across the

spectrum

Industry should play an active role in curriculum design of existing programs

Continuous Industry – Academia interaction is necessary for developing an innovative curriculum

that is contemporary and relevant to industry. These adjustments in the current curriculum will

ensure that at least students are familiar with the latest tools/techniques and the industry’s

expectations from them.

  The focus should be on developing curriculum that enhances not just technical skills but also

problem solving, interpersonal, and soft skills

  Engagement of industry is possible by including industry experts in Board of Studies, which

approves course structure as external experts as well as through feedback from the industry

experts during campus visits

  Usually it is seen that the private universities have a great deal of flexibility in updating their

course curriculum to make it in sync with industry

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Resource sharing between industry and academia

Resource sharing in a jointly developed program, which has industry relevant curriculum, will be

beneficial to both, industry and the academia in the long run. Many universities are now running

 joint programs with leading companies in industry1.

  Industry can provide the latest resources (such as software , tools, etc.) as currently being

used in the industry. This will not only ensure that the students are pre-trained on these

tools before they join industry, but will also expose the industry to a large set of potential

candidates, improving employee acquisition and retention

  Students will get to gain a lot as it will provide a superior learning experience by hands-on

practice on tools/software , simulation and virtual labs

  Manufacturing sector companies stand to gain the most through this as education institutes

cannot replicate full scale manufacturing infrastructure. Thus, most of the learning forstudents is only theoretical in nature. However, through resource sharing, students will get

exposed to the end-to-end manufacturing process, greatly reducing their training time once

they join companies

  “Industry is willing to give out time. I can tell that for all the companies I have worked for. I

think industry and academia are waiting for the other to take the initiative, and so far both

are not taking it in a way it should be.”  –Country Manager-HR, Leading IT MNC

Focus on longer summer training/internship period and projects

Longer internships will ensure right industry exposure and help students develop professional

attitude and habits

  Most industry experts are happy with the idea of providing students with 6 months long

internships with their organizations as they believe that currently prevailing norm of 8-12

weeks is too short a time for the students to understand industry nuances

  Longer internship period will ensure that students have right exposure to the industry and

are diligently involved in the project undertaken. The students can then be asked to

continue to work on these projects once they join the organizations, resulting in much better

deployment of fresh hires

  The academic structure in universities need to be updated to incorporate these changes and

provide students with the flexibility of longer internships

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Industry – Academia Disconnect: The Road Ahead

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Involving Students in Research / Consulting Projects 

Live projects/case studies make students aware of current trends and development in the industry,

which positively impact their performance on live projects later

  Students will get an understanding of the practices currently followed in the industry and it

will also create research opportunities for both industry and faculty

  It will help executives in testing some of their ideas and also get an understanding of the

quality of potential hires

  It will reduce the time of deployment of new hires as they can directly start working on the

projects they have previously worked

Training of faculty and students on technical and soft skills

  Both industry experts and academia agree that students should learn at least basic

engineering, management, etc. concepts in schools. This will ensure that the foundation of 

knowledge is solid

  Almost all companies provide 3-6 months long training to fresh hires. This includes technical,

soft skills, ethics, etc. The right time to provide such training is actually when students are

still in their schools so that the training can be embedded in the course curriculum itself 

  This will not only result in significant saving of training costs on part of industry but will also

make the students much more job-ready as they will be exposed to same tools, technology

and hardware on which they are expected to work on during their job

  The deployment time for such students will be far lesser than the current scenario and this

will also lead to much better retention of fresh hires

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5.0 Notes1.  Sharda University has created academic tie-ups with leading corporate for sharing of 

technology, tools, software and faculty. For instance, Sharda University has launched MBA in

analytics in collaboration with IBM where experts from IBM will be teaching the cutting edge

analytics technologies to students. Similarly, Sharda University has launched training

program with Oracle University to train its students on latest applications

6.0 Sources of Information

  ‘Higher Education in India: Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17) and beyond’, Ernst & Young,

FICCI, Planning Commission GOI

  ‘Shortage of teaching staff and lack of new programmes stun growth of new IITs’, Mail

Today, Dec 11, 2012

  ‘Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations’ where the HR professionals and

leaders from various top companies had discussed the key gaps between industry and

academia

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All facts and figures mentioned in the document have been taken from publicly available

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— without the permission of Sharda University