Soft skills are a necessity today R. C. Dalal EMPLOYABILITY of youth has always been a challenging task in our country. Given the demographic profile, the policy response to youth employability all along these years has not been very satisfactory. This has neither generated enough employment opportunities nor has it empowered youth with competency skills to get employed. Whatever be the reason, the challenge is more veracious today than ever before, as 550 million people are below 25 years of age. In an Assocham-conducted study, barring the top 20 institutions, 90 per cent graduates were not found employable. The scenario gets worse when manpower survey projects 45-50 per cent job vacancy at Tier-II level in search of competent people. Popular employability surveys have found the youth deficient in a variety of skills. In terms of textbook employability criterion, graduates are found wanting in soft skills and right attitude. Another vital aspect identified for non-employability of graduates is the lack of synchronisation between job training and requisites for new jobs. Job training being imparted at professional educational institutions is customised for a manufacturing sector in the perspective which contributes just 16 per cent of new job creation. This mismatch of employable competency and the skill training largely contributes to staggering proportions of unemployability. Also, summer internships and campus placements are in disarray and hardly serve the intended purpose in Tier-II institutions. The most enabling alternative is revamping of summer internships and alumni mentoring of students. Where alumni associations are not strongly enriched in campus life, faculty mentoring can instil confidence and self-belief in students. It requires strengthening of educational institutions with competent faculty and active industry-academia interactions. A more exhaustive response stipulates an autonomous course-designing framework to institutions. These institutions, within the broad parameters, would design their own course curricula and facilitate content delivery with active industry participation. Capacity intake and the admission process then would be customised in such a manner that students would be groomed for instant job placements. Apart from saving training and attrition costs, it would further subsidise the cost of training of students when industry passes on the cost savings to the institution. Alternatively, budgetary provisions should be invested in enabling technology and to design open courseware on the lines being experimented at the MIT, USA. In this framework, the courseware is delivered by the best faculty using satellite technology. Thefaculty in host institutions facilitate, coordinate and counsel students in the efficient courseware delivery. The institutions can thus optimise use of existing building and laboratory infrastructure by offering job-oriented programmes. The writer is a Professor of management at Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 11:12:00 +0000
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