Radical changes in education system needed: Karnik

Bangalore, Aug 29: NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik today called for a radical transformation in the education system of the country to meet the increasing demand for talent for the emerging engineering services outsourcing market, expected to grow to a 50 billion dollar business by 2020.

Talking to newspersons here, Mr Karnik, who was here in connection with the second Solid Works World, said that though there was a steady flow of manpower from the universities and colleges, only 25 per cent of the graduating students were qualified and there was a need to increase their number. There was a need to enhance the skillsets of students, for which radical reforms need to be incorporated in the educational system.

He said the manufacturing sector had increasingly become IT and knowledge-based and India should gear up to the situation to be competitive in the global market. There was a need to create a brand new image of 'engineered in India'.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, Director Sanjay Govind Dhande said the country needed at least 50 institutions of IIT calibre and produce at least 50,000 engineers annually. The IITs were now producing only 5,000 engineers and there was a need to increase their number tremendously. He, however, said the major challenge would be to find the necessary funds, faculty and infrastructure. Though the intake into IITs was only 5,000, there was thrice that number of talented students who fail to get admission due to capacity restrictions.

On the issue of reservation, he said the capacity would be enhanced in three phases, but the issue that need to be tackled was infrastructure and faculty.

Mr Dhande said there was also a need to enhance the curricula to enable the engineering educational institutions to be tuned to the changing needs of the industry. In this regard, he referred to the setting up of a concept lab and a 4i (innovation, implementation, integration and incubation) lab at IIT Kanpur.

He said students should get into visual thinking mode to look to future technologies and should be groomed accordingly.

UNI