HRD Min for academia-industry collaborations

Observing that students graduating from universities are not "industry-ready", Union HRD Minister Pallam Raju today emphasised the need for a curriculum change and increased academia-industry collaborations.
"We are seeing that the students who are coming out (of universities and colleges) are not necessarily industry ready and the industry is spending a lot of resources in re-training them to be industry ready," Raju said.
He was talking to reporters after inaugurating 'International Workshop on Industry-Academia Collaboration for Greater National Productivity' organised by the HRD Ministry, All India Council of Technical Education and CII.
Raju said the conference will focus on increasing employability of university students.

"One objective of the seminar is how do we pick up curriculum and how do we give the students adequate exposure while they are in the campus itself so that they are industry ready...So that our students are more employable not only for the industry, but globally, and they would be competitive," he said.
The Minister said the government is trying to build strong academia-industry linkages.

"We are trying to establish a strong mechanism whereby these linkages are strengthened and academic institutions benefit through participation of industries in campus. Parallelly, industry can benefit from the outcome of the research and development that happen on campuses and research establishments," he said.

Raju also emphasised the role of industry in upgrading the curriculum. "There is also a need for creating capacity for research, skilling and upgrading our curriculum. This hand-holding has to come from the industry in guiding the academic institutions in strengthening the curriculum and other facilities."
He also asked the academia and industry to work on a strong research base in the country and to choose areas of research and development activities.
"Can we have joint project proposals from a consortium of academia and industry in next 30 days for the government to provide all round support in some select areas," he said.