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Three different encounters in three diverse cities in June showed me how many
point of views exist on the way to build a knowledge ecosystem, and indeed how
many of the challenges are similar, while some are different. A visit to the
city of Wuxi in China, a couple of hours away from the majestic showpiece city
of Shanghai, was an education in itself given the scale of their infrastructure
investments. As the Secretary of the Communist Party of China told me over
lunch, all they lack is a constant flow of talented people to fuel the growth of
the services industry in the city.
Sharing the dais with the chief minister, agriculture minister and IT
minister of Madhya Pradesh (MP) a few days later, it was heartening to find that
here is one state that has woken up a little late, but is now embracing the IT
and BPO industry in full earnest. Excellent initiatives in e-government and
e-agriculture have enabled the aam aadmi to get the benefits of IT. The Madhya
Pradesh government, with its notified SEZs in Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, and
Jabalpur, is now proudly flaunting these cities that also figure in the Nasscom-AT
Kearney survey of top fifty IT cities.
And finally, two successive meetings in Pune with Vivek Sawant, the effusive
CEO of Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation (MKCL), and Dr Narendra Jadhav,
academician extraordinaire and vice chancellor of the exalted Pune University,
to underline again how the citys enlightened academic community has spearheaded
the knowledge revolution in this western city. The sheer spread of the MKCL with
IT literacy programs offered across thousands of locations in the state has now
laid the base for a totally IT literate state which augurs well for a future
solution to the IT manpower crisis, afflicting the growth of many firms all over
the country.
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Ganesh natarajan |
The causes for the gap between graduates and employable skills are
manyoutdated curriculum, poor quality faculty, anachronistic technology in
education, and a myopic view of career opportunities. Also, the private sector
barring a few initiatives in the recent past, have demonstrated an alarming lack
of capability to bridge quality with scale. The tendency to build alternative
training systems and succumb to the attractiveness of indiscriminate franchising
has discredited many fine private institutions. The need to have a degree under
their belt before applying their minds to the onerous task of career building
has left many young graduates to start their career too late in the day.
The mutual distrust that exists between employers, traditional universities
and colleges, and private training institutions has to be dispelled by some
strong and proactive collaboration initiative. The weakness in faculty
capabilities will have to be overcome by deploying technology at a scale that
permits dissemination of well-designed content to colleges and education centers
across the state, and the role of the teacher must morph into that of a learning
facilitator. The task that MKCL has taken up and the vision of forward looking
universities like Pune and Tamil Nadu to address curriculum and capability
issues through public-private partnerships are steps that all states and indeed
countries will need to take.
Career seekers too must be encouraged to break free from the shackles of
their paper chase mindset and to use their time after high school to analyze
their own vocational aptitude and interest.
IT education is in need of transformation and it will need the participation
of all the players to enable and sustain this change!
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