The Indian economy is in the
midst of an unprecedented growth spurt. During the last three years,
it grew at about 9%-plus, while it was 9.4% during 2006-07. The
non-farm sector recorded a growth rate of 10% for the last three years
and 11% in the immediate preceding year, as against 6% recorded
during the earlier years. The investment rate in the country rose
to 31.5% in 2004-05, to 33.8% in 2005-06, and to 35.1%
during 2006-07, from a peak of 25% during 2002-03. During the
current year, it is expected to be over 36%. The domestic savings too have
shown a significant rise: they grew by 30% in 2003-04, 32.4% in
2005-06, and 34.7% during 2006-07, and it is expected to grow by more
than 35% of GDP during 2007-08.The foreign exchange reserves stood
at a comfortable level of $214 bn plus. The number of millionaires has grown
substantially. And the future too is looking hunky-dory. Thanks
to the software industry that grew by 33% and the BPO industry that
grew by 37% during 2005-06 and the ongoing reforms that integrated
Indian economy with global economy, India is today “going places”.
The emerging new image of India is well captured by Rangachari (“China
Chakkar: India-China Relations – A Review”, Freedom First, July 2007, pp 5-8) when he observed: “India
and Indians are sought after, Indian companies are becoming global players and
India is even cited as a possible threat to future prosperity of the developed
world.” Simply put, India is “resurgent and en route to prosperity!”
How to Sustain the Current Growth Rate
The prosperity and progress of an economy,
even in such an “enabling environment”, is largely dependent on
the social norms and institutions of a country. The citizens’
attitude towards work, their level of mutual trust, standards of
ethics and social norms form the foundation for economic
activity and prosperity of the society. It is only when people maximize
their own individual utility that the economy as a whole can grow and
also sustain its growth rate. And maximization of individual’s
utility is directly proportional to the quality and quantum of
skills-set that one carries with him/her. In a globalized
economy, businesses, while competing for a share in
the highly competitive markets, essentially look for qualified knowledge workers for improving their
product differentiation. It means, all this becomes feasible only when the market can enjoy uninterrupted supply of ‘efficient’ workforce.
The Mckinsey Global
Institute predicts that by 2008, 160 million jobs in services are likely to be performed
offshore, which means India stands a better chance of getting those
employment opportunities. According to a 2005 Nasscom-McKinsey study,
if we maintain the current global leadership level in IT and
BPO industries, our offshore industries could, by 2010, well
become one of the world’s great export industries on
a par with France’s luxury goods industry or Japan’s automotive
sector. But to maintain the growth momentum, the report says
that “India will need a 2.3 million-strong IT and BPO workforce by
2010”.
Ironically, the same study
states that India will confront a potential shortage of skilled
workers in IT and BPO industries in the next decade. According to the
report, currently only about 25% of technical graduates and 10-15%
of general college graduates are suitable for employment in the
offshore IT and BPO industries respectively. The intensity of
the problem can well be gauged from what NASSCOM has
recommended: setting up of ‘focused-education zones’ to improve the
quality of higher education, and deregulating higher education in stages over
the next five to seven years and shifting to a largely
demand-based funding system for colleges and universities. It also recommends
that the trade body, NASSCOM, may pilot industry-owned programs and
government-facilitated integrated skill development programs, and
scale up to cover over 2000 colleges by 2010.
There is yet another
disturbing deficiency in our present educational system: a recent
KPMG report titled “Global Skills for Graduates in Financial
Services” (Business Standard,
June 6, 2007) says that 58% of Indian financial services organizations
are facing difficulties in recruiting the right people with the
right set of skills. The report also states that the graduates are
coming out of universities “with inspiring theoretical knowledge.” But what the financial companies are looking for is business soft skills
such as: teamwork, communication,
client relationship management, customer services, business awareness, problem-solving and achievement-orientation
skills that are essential
for them to operate in today’s global competition. As customers are becoming more and more demanding, retention of their
loyalty has become a big
challenge for financial service providers, including insurance companies, and that is
where the relative importance
of ‘soft skills’ has increased. The net result is: acute shortage of skilled workforce for the financial
services companies that
are today contributing 7%-plus to the country’s GDP, which is likely to
increase further.
Interestingly, amidst these constraints, we do have an advantage over the competing countries
for outsourcing jobs: the median age
of our people is just over 24 years, and by 2025, it is likely touch 29 years compared to 48 years in Japan, 45 in West Europe,
and 37 in China and the US. It
means, the world looks at India for
eligible workforce, particularly in service sector. And it means tens of thousands of global jobs are likely to move to India, provided we are
equipped to capitalize on the growth
in world outsourcing business. All
these developments cumulatively suggest that we not only need to assemble a large pool of science, technology and managerial talent of the
quality looked for by the industry,
but also equip the graduates from the
general stream with market-related knowledge
and soft skills. This obviously calls for a paradigm shift in our higher education system, that too at a fast pace.
Higher Education in India: Current Status
Although there is growth in the
infrastructure under higher education, which is rated to be
the second largest after the US in the world, it hardly covers 7% of
the population and is lower than even that of developing countries such
as Indonesia (11%), Brazil (12%), and Thailand (19%) (Source: UGC
Annual Report 2000-01). In qualitative terms, it depicts a still
agonizing scenario: “There are serious complaints at
all levels about the lack of responsiveness in the system. Academic activities
are at low ebb and the academic calendar itself gets seriously
disrupted almost every year. The system of higher education
continues to encourage memorization of facts and regurgitation rather
than creativity. While the results in higher education are clearly
determined by the foundation laid in school education, we
cannot wait for the ills of school education to be remedied before bringing in meaningful improvements in higher education. We
cannot ignore the fact
that we do not have many colleges today which can pride themselves on imparting undergraduate education of high quality, comparable
to some of the well-known
institutions in the world” (Ramamurti Committee Report, 1990). The findings of this report, though
old, still hold good, and for that matter, the current situation may be worse than what has been
described in the report.
The current plight of our university system is well described by Andre Beteille (2005) who
laments that “our universities are
simply functioning as degree-giving
institutions concentrating on conducting examinations rather than becoming a system that transmits, generates and interprets knowledge.”
That being the reality, it is no
wonder that Prof. Manoj Pant, in his article
“Reorienting Priorities” (Economics Times
2007), observed that according to the 2001 Census data, out of the 38 million university degree-holders,
28 million are non-technical
graduates and are, therefore, considered
by the private sector as lacking employable skills. “One of the main reasons
for such poor skill competency is the
lopsided growth with emphasis on churning
out university graduates to the neglect of employable industry skills”, he said.
What Then Needs to be Done?
If our youth have to acquire and enjoy a
unique competitive advantage in the global job market, we should
not cripple the universities, be they private or public, with
bureaucratic procedures. They must be allowed to capitalize on the
market opportunities by granting them freedom to redesign their courses
or design new courses with least time lag. At the same time,
universities must hone their faculty resources and build relationships
with the industry, the generator of employment,
thus facilitating a free dialogue between them
in designing the requisite curriculum for supplying ‘employable’
graduates to the industry, in the process helping industry compete
in the global market.
Honing Faculty Resources
The teaching of quality and the quality of
teaching often
overlap and cannot be easily differentiated. According
to Ronal Barnett, the central philosophy of higher education must essentially aim at turning out students with right experience, learning and achievement, rather than focusing on institutional performance in terms of efficiency, economy, research
ratings and student output. Teachers have to
therefore pursue ‘beyond-teaching strategies’. This can be achieved by encouraging students towards independent learning, which is only possible
through the case study method of
teaching, particularly in disciplines such as insurance, finance and
human resources management. In order to make
this happen, institutes must engage
in upgrading the skills of the existing teachers by equipping them with
tools of positive thinking, effective
communication, leadership, self-development
and ability to cope with stress. It is
only then they can take
the concept of ‘beyond-teaching strategies’ to their logical end.
The universities must also
enjoy the freedom of recruiting faculty from a cross-cultural
system to obviate inbreeding in faculty and thereby generate cross-fertilization
that can result in innovative teaching styles. Here, it would be
interesting to look at the observations of the recently-appointed
Oversight Committee of Reservation for OBCs in IITs and IIMs (2005):
“One key issue in faculty recruitment is the need for
cross-fertilization of ideas in institutions of higher learning. All
the great universities of the world have an inflexible policy of recruiting
only alumni of other universities into the faculty. In
India too, in earlier decades, faculty was from diverse
backgrounds and drawn from other universities and states in
large measure. But over the past three decades or so, increasingly
faculty is drawn largely from among the alumni of the same university. Such
‘academic incest’ is leading to a stultifying atmosphere of
limited intellectual interaction and undermining fresh thinking,
new ideas and innovative research. As part of the effort to
rejuvenate our universities, we need to adopt the global best practices in
recruitment”.
Today, the real reason for
lack of quality faculty, particularly in professional institutes such
as medical, engineering and management institutes, is poor emoluments.
The current levels of payments in these institutes do not make
teaching an attractive profession. With the kind of ongoing
corporate recruitments, the same may hold good even with the
traditional disciplines. Therefore, the obvious need of the hour is
to make them
competitive. There is also a fear that many institutes
do not provide conducive atmosphere for the faculty to deliver quality intellectual output. It is also felt that there is no ‘incentive’ for
performance. With the result, the
main stakeholders of the system—students—are destined to live with mediocre
teachers, recruited at times even on
non-academic considerations (Thangamuthu 2007). Corrections must be made wherever warranted.
Introduction of Soft Skills as a Subject in
Every Programme
Today, the contribution of services sector
to GDP is more than 50% (Rashmi Banga 2007) and the greatest chunk
of it is contributed by export of services like software and other
business and professional services that have grown from almost
nil to more than 60% between 1980-81 and 2005-06. Similarly,
according to a study by Banga and Goldar (2005), the contribution of
service sector input to output growth in manufacturing (organized)
was about 1% in the 1980s, which increased to about 24% in
the 1990s. It means with an annual growth rate of 9%, the
service sector—exporting
English-speaking skills of
Indian boys and girls, retailing, tourism and hospitality,
BPOs/KPOs—is all set to become the job market
for Indian youth.
As against this changing
job market scenario, our universities are still languishing with
traditional curriculum that is heavily oriented toward hard skills, that
too, imparted through rote mode. Thus, a substantial section of
graduates leaving universities, having no idea of the
business environment and its dynamics and lacking soft skills that
are found essential by the business for maintaining better
client-business interaction, are not recruited by the industry. At least that
is what the KPMG report “Global Skills for Graduates in Financial Services’ says.
It is, therefore, time for Indian Universities to start teaching soft skills—teamwork,
communications, negotiation, client relationships
management, customer services, business awareness, problem-solving and achievement orientation—as an independent subject. It must be introduced as a separate subject with suitable curriculum, offering it for a minimum of two
credits, starting from the first
semester. If needed, the regulatory authorities
such as UGC, AICTE may make its introduction
mandatory, just as UGC introduced the subject
of environmental sciences for creating awareness
among the youth about the challenges posed to the environment by the actions of mankind and about restoring its sustainability.
It must be taught mainly in
the form of role-plays and case studies showcasing team-culture, customs,
attitudes and behavior and other requirements for the success
of team play at work places. Instead of teaching stereotypes,
institutes must teach prototypes. Panel discussions may be
arranged with managers who have worked in different parts of the
world for global companies, so that insights into the
practical challenges of working in multicultural teams and
workplaces can be provided.
Institutes must also
allocate time and grades to students in order to encourage them to
undertake social work to better the lives of the less-endowed
in the society, so that such interactions will build a right mindset
at the right age among the youth for cultivating the concept of ‘social
inclusiveness’, besides eliminating acrimony between the haves and
the have-nots. This will also help them in establishing relationships
with their future customers with confidence and ease. In all
streams of higher education, institutes must place their students on
summer internship with businesses, which they are likely to ultimately
join, for having a genuine feel about the business environments and for
getting themselves acquainted with business dynamics well before
joining them. This single act of the universities /institutes
will give a terrific boost to the employability of the graduates.
Alignment of Course Content with Changing Job
Market Scenario
K Sudha Rao and Mithilesh Kr Singh (2006) argue
that there is a gap between the need of employment terminals—industry—and
the academic institutions. As employment in government departments is decreasing
and the industry-related jobs are increasing, they feel that
there is a need to foster close links between academic
institutes and the user industry to identify gaps in skill requirements and
fill them with proper modifications to the curriculum.
According to an Evalueserve
report, the global KPO market will grow by 45% per annum, from
$1.29 bn in financial year 2003 to $17 bn by financial year 2010,
and 71% of global KPO revenues are likely to be garnered by the
Indian KPO sector. This growth potential in the KPO sector is thus expected
to create 250,000 jobs by 2010. Another enticing aspect of this job
potential is its multiplier effect: for, every job created in
the offshore financial (KPO) sector will result in the creation
of two to three jobs in other sectors. Most of these jobs are confined to
research, particularly in the fields of pharmaceuticals, biotechnology,
design engineering,
market analysis, financial analysis of companies,
statistical analysis, learning solutions, content development, legal services, copyright protection services, network management training
and consultancy.
All these jobs call for a
specific set of tools. Firstly, the curriculum of currently offered courses under
economics, mathematics, statistics, English
and psychology needs redesigning so
as to make the graduates realize
their full potential in the new jobs thrown open by the global outsourcing
businesses. Secondly, there is also
an immense need to make these programs
more practical, besides being analytical, in their orientation. Thirdly,
students undergoing these programs must be placed, at least for a month-and-a-half,
with KPOs under summer internship with a mandate
to submit a project report, so that they will have a hang of the business environment in which they are likely to work later. This single innovation
alone will make students more
employable. The courses in which such
modifications are warranted and a suggestive
modification of curriculum thereof are as under:
MA Economics
As businesses are getting more and more internationalized
and sovereign functions are getting redefined, the discipline
of economics is gaining critical importance. In tune with
this, the proposed curriculum offers a solid foundation in
computational mathematics and quantitative techniques that have
today become indispensable for a student of economics to explore newer
frontiers of research in the fields of industrial, managerial,
monetary and international economics. The program also emphasizes on
international trade, monetary and fiscal policies, welfare
economics and advanced econometrics to enable the students analyze and
interpret economic events, both national and international.
Semester I
1.
Micro Economics
2.
Macro Economics
3.
Political Economy
4.
IT Skills
5.
Computational Mathematics
6.
Soft Skills
Semester II
7.
Monetary Economics
8.
International Economics
9.
Economic Growth and Development
10.
Econometrics
11.
Welfare Economics
12.
Soft Skills
Semester
III
13.
Advanced Econometrics
14.
Globalization and Indian Economic Environment
15.
Managerial Economics
16.
Industrial Organization and Public Policy
17.
Environmental Economics
Semester
IV
18.
Research Methodology
19.
Elective I*
Paper I
Paper
II
20. Elective
II*
Paper
I
Paper II
*Electives
to be chosen from the following area-specific papers:
Financial Economics:
Financial Markets
Managerial Finance
International Economics:
Global Economic Environment
International Financial
Management
Economic Policies:
Monetary and Fiscal
Policies
Trade Policies
M Sc Mathematics
Today, virtually in every field there is
application of mathematics. In the light of this development, the suggested
curriculum offers students a thorough grounding in basic
mathematics from where they can branch off to newer fields
of mathematical application. It shall provide practical training in
cryptography, dynamical systems—discrete and continuous; chaos theory
and optimization techniques. The unique feature of the program is its
intensive training in applying mathematical principles to financial modeling,
risk management techniques, economic analysis, simulation techniques,
neural networks and actuarial sciences.
Semester
I
Advanced Real Analysis
Linear Algebra
Advanced Algebra
Ordinary Differential Equations
IT Skills
Soft Skills
Semester
II
Complex Analysis
Topology
Partial Differential Equations
Optimization Techniques
Dynamical Systems Soft Skills
Semester
III
Probability and statistics
Discrete Mathematics
Neural Networks
Functional Analysis
Elective-I*
Elective-II*
Semester
IV
Modeling and Simulation Techniques
Discrete Dynamical Systems
Control Theory
Elective-I*
Elective-II*
Research Methodology
* Electives
to be chosen from the following area-specific papers:
• Financial Mathematics
__ Mathematical
modeling in Finance
__ Exchange
Rate Dynamics
• Cryptography
__Information
and Security Systems
__Data
and Knowledge Extraction
•
Actuarial
Mathematics
__ Mathematical Economics
__ Mathematical Economics
__Actuarial
Principles and Practice
M Sc Statistics
The program aims at providing a solid
foundation in statistics per se, and from that platform encourages students
to branch off into various applications: industrial statistics, statistics
for management, actuarial statistics, bio-statistics, etc. It also
introduces students to the important statistical sources used in
business and government decision making to make the students aware
of the limitations of such data and to develop their presentation
skills. The ultimate aim of the program is to make the students
competent to apply their statistical knowledge in different
walks of research and thereby widen their employment opportunities.
Semester I
Mathematical Analysis
Theory of Probability
Distribution Theory
Theory of Sampling
IT Skills
Soft Skills
Semester II
Advanced Probability Theory
Theory of Estimation
Parametric Testing and Decision Theory
Multivariate Data Analysis
Linear Statistical Models
Soft Skills
Semester III
Computational Techniques
Sequential and Non-parametric Methods
Time Series Analysis
Stochastic Process
Industrial Statistics
Optimization Techniques
Semester IV
Elective – I*
__Paper
I
__Paper
II
Elective – II*
Elective – II*
__Paper
I
__Paper
II
Research
Methodology
SAS
*Electives to be chosen from the following
area-specific papers:
A.
Actuarial Statistics
Paper I - Probability Models and Life Tables
Paper II - Actuarial Mathematics
B.
Biostatistics
Paper
I - Bioassay Techniques
Paper II - Clinical Trials
C. Economic
Analysis
Paper
I - Economics
Paper II - Statistical Models
D. Programming and Knowledge
Discovery
Paper I - JAVA Programming
Paper II - Data Mining
M A English
In the context of increasing importance of
English under the ongoing winds of globalization, the program provides
a sound grounding in British Literature, Indian Writing in English,
American Literature and Commonwealth Literature, Literary Theory and Criticism,
World Literature in Translation, Translation Theory and Practice
and English Language Teaching. The unique features of the program are intensive training in Listening and Speaking Skills in
English Language Lab., English for
Business Communication, Science and Technology, Online Writing and Creative and
Media Writing. It finally makes the student ready to start as an editor in KPOs engaged in content development, learning solutions, documentation,
legal services, etc.
Semester I
Language Lab
British Poetry - I (Beginning -18th
Century)
British Drama (Beginning - Present)
British Prose and Fiction - I (Beginning -I8th
Century)
IT Skills
Soft Skills
Semester II
Shakespeare
British Poetry - II (19th Century – Present)
British Prose and Fiction - II (19th
Century – Present)
American Literature
Commonwealth Literature
Soft Skills
Semester III
Indian Writing - I (Poetry and Prose)
Indian Writing - II (Drama & Fiction)
World Literature in Translation (European and
Indian)
English Language Teaching
Literary Theory and Criticism
Journalistic Writing
Semester IV
Research Methodology Report
Writing
Elective
– I*
__Paper I
__Paper
II
Elective – II*
Elective – II*
__Paper
I
__Paper
II
*Electives to be chosen from the following
area-specific papers:
A.
Business Communication
Paper
I - Corporate Communication
Paper
II - Technical Writing
B.
Writing for Multimedia
Paper I - Online Writing
Paper II - Media Writing
C. Translation
and Creative Writing
Paper I - Translation - Theory and Practice
Paper II - Creative Writing
MA Psychology
Training may be offered through course work, field
work and research in various facets of psychology—psychometrics,
counseling, and biological and cognitive processes, Once completed,
students, as counselors,
shall be able to apply the
psychological principles in new business
organizations, such as IT, knowledge management
and investment management, to solve stress-related
problems, besides helping such organizations
as professional trainers in toning up the soft skills of employees from time to
time.
Semester I
1.
IT Skills
2.
Principles of Psychology
3.
Social Psychology
4.
Quantitative Methods
5.
Child and Adolescent Psychology
6.
Soft Skills
Semester II
7.
Abnormal Psychology
8.
Theories of Personality
9.
Psychology of Adulthood and Aging
10.
Biopsychology
11.
Cognitive Psychology
12.
Soft Skills
Semester III
13.
Psychology of Learning and Reading
14.
Psychology of Motivation
15.
Health Psychology
16.
Counseling
17.
Psychological Testing.
18.
Psychological Testing – Practical
Semester IV
19. Research
Methodology
20. Area-specific
Elective I*
-
Paper I
-
Paper II
21. Area-specific
Elective II*
- Paper
I
- Paper
II
*Electives to be chosen from the following
area-specific papers:
A. Psychometrics/Assessment
and Intervention
Paper I - IT and Knowledge Management Industry
Paper II - Education
B. Counseling
Paper
I - Family and Marital Counseling
Paper II - Cognitive-behavioral Counseling
C. Organizational
Behavior
Paper I - Structure and Dynamics of Groups and Organizations
Paper II - Training and Coaching
Such refocusing of existing
programs towards changing job-environment shall not only make
these graduates highly employable, but also pave the way for garnering more
business for the BPO/KPO industry, which
will ultimately sustain the economic growth rate.
Conclusion
There is a strong feeling in the market that
growth in BPO/KPO, IT and ITeS sectors is likely to be impaired
by shortage of workforce with right set of skills. And the industries,
as a whole, are looking at the educators to fill this gap. Educators
must, therefore, strive to build long-term
relationships with the emerging job market segments and offer, in conjunction with them, well-trained graduates with
requisite skill sets who
are ready to hit the ground running and contribute to the growth of the business. Such
innovative initiatives
alone can sustain the current growth rate of the Indian economy.
References
1. Beteille
Andre (2005), “Universities as Public Institutions”, Economic and Political Weekly,
July 30, 2005.
2. Business Standard,
June 6, 2007
3. C. Thangamuthu (2007), “The Indian Higher Education:
Retrospect and Prospect”, University
News, Vol. 45, No. 06.
4. K Sudha Rao and Mithilesh Kr Singh, University
“Education in India: Challenges Ahead”, University News, Vol. 45,
No. 2, pp. 1-16.
5. Rashmi
Banga, “Indian Service Sector: Inviting Growth with Open Arms”, The Analyst, January 2007.
6. The
Economic Times, August 10, 2007.
7. www.evaluserve.com
GRKMurty,
University News Vol 45 No.50, Dec10-16, 2007,
pp5-12
No comments:
Post a Comment