How to bridge the gap between Academia & Industry

There’s a huge gap between the type of skills and the type of competencies that are required by industry and people being supplied by the institutions of higher education. Every year around 1.5 million engineers are passing out, India becomes a factory churning out engineers. As per the recent reports hardly 7% of them are employable and therefore the ratio is traveling down as years travel by. Why that only a handful of people are employable?

It’s an industry-academia gap! It’s the gap between the engineering education system and the industry’s expectations from entry-level engineers. The Academia gap is emerging because something is lacking. So, what’s lacking in our education system? The way to bridge the gap between academia and industry? Allow us to take a practical view of addressing this gap with the following recommendations.

1. Alignment of the curriculum with industry requirements:

Despite exponential changes in almost every field, the college curriculum is usually rigid and hard to revise. It’s advisable that the curriculum is revised regularly and is developed as per the industry needs. Academia can also inspect existing pedagogies and see if the same is being improved and made more practical in approach. Thus far there has been immense reliance on the classroom methodology and a theory-heavy approach, however, the necessity is to form the whole approach more practical case studies oriented; regularly calling guest speakers from different industries and letting students interact with them. This will be extremely beneficial for everybody.

2. Emphasis on skill-based education:

“Skill-based education is lacking altogether the higher education fields in India. The main target of management institutes got to shift from theoretical knowledge to skill-based education with a more practical and dynamic approach,” Therefore, besides imparting the core or technical knowledge, academia should also plan to specialize in the softer and behavioral aspects like interpersonal skills, leadership capability, attitude, communication skills.

3. Build student motivation:

Be it any skill, motivating students to play a really important role is very important As everybody has special strengths in different areas. An honest number of students today are choosing engineering under compulsion, which automatically brings down their motivation. On a positive note, everyone will have some talent in them. Engineering graduates should tend to opportunities where they discover their strengths. It’s often done by making students work on something out-of-the-box and providing them with strong encouragement. Demotivating just kills the creativity and thus the confidence in the students. By making students participate during a diverse set of activities can lift them and increase their motivation.

4. Capacity Development:

Capacity development is another important way during which the industry-academia gap is usually reduced. It should be seen over an extended-term and continuous improvement mechanism (popularly mentioned as Kaizen principles) using which capacities are often developed across the whole ecosystem.

5. Workplace exposure through internships, live projects, and company interactions:

Well-timed and well-deliberated exposure to the industry provides a much-needed experience to the students. They will take the form of internships or part-time projects that students can work on, which give practical insights into how the industry operates and expose students to the present realities of the workplace. While there is no guarantee that these internships will fetch permanent jobs, they’ll equip the students to manage the wants of the business once they join the industry. Such opportunities boost students’ confidence as they learn tons by being present within the workplace.

6. up skilling the faculty:

Apart from that concentrate on the curriculum structure, it is also imperative to provide the right exposure and training to the faculty. Most of the faculty don’t possess requisite industry experience which comes within the way of imparting practical knowledge about industries. It’ll be great if the faculty can regularly undertake short industrial projects alongside industry experts. This may help confirm that the faculty is in line with these industrial trends.

7. Consistent knowledge transfer:

Last but not the least, all the above-mentioned points need to be weaved into a uniform knowledge transfer ecosystem. This ecosystem should connect new curriculum development, faculty development programs, developing better teaching practices, building industry partners for an internship, having an industry expert ecosystem with strong backup from the management of engineering colleges and universities. This consistent ecosystem should provide new thoughts and therefore the latest happenings in a motivating and thought-provoking manner.