Academic industry relationships the past present future

© Mindtree limited 2012. Confidential - for limited circulation only

November, 2012

Academic Institutes and Businesses- The past, present and future

Confidential - for limited circulation only 2

Academic institutes and Businesses

Parallel Universes

Cautious Leverage

Education as part of Supply Chain

?

1985 1995 2005 2015


Current Reality

• A comfortable existence for the blessed

• Businesses

• Created world-class training facilities that generate global envy

• Tied up “Day 1” in selected campuses

• Recruitment = Creating zero-cost warm pool of 1000s of students who will join

whenever the business needs

• One company is now recruiting for 2013, and selected 5500 students in 2012,

even as the 2011 graduates are still waiting for joining call

• Colleges

• Proudly advertise the top logos and attract best in class students

• Proudly claim the IT giants “train” our students

• Placement is no sweat – students of all disciplines are recruited in 2 days

• Enviable ‘business’ to be in – both demand and supply side in auto-pilot


The impossible is achieved – all 3 stakeholders are happy!

StudentsJoining an autonomous college is an automatic

passport to a job

CollegeThe feeder

between the Students and Jobs, with a 4-

year delay

IndustryCaptive students will join us when

we need them


So where’s the problem?

90 days no substitute for 4 years

Weak Foundation

No Learning

Agility

Cannot scale with

rapid change

Industry recruits

more freshers

Joined college

expecting easy life

No tough technical

gate

No intrinsic Desire to

Learn

Faculty with

lowered morale

Got a Job + Training with no sweat

Business College


But who is the real loser?

• Businesses and Colleges, both, are caught in a vicious cycle, but

the real loser is our next generation.

• They came in, not because they love engineering, but seduced by

dreams of an easy life

• The feeling got reinforced with an easy four years of little learning, and

even less “Aha” moments (that come with real learning)

• The feeling got cemented into conviction every time they somehow

managed to deliver another project – and got the expected raise

• Till one day the company realizes they are commodity that can be easily

replaced.


If ain’t broken, don’t fix it?

• It takes little to burst the bubble

• Is your engine tied with your Day 1 company’s fortunes?

• Ask yourself some real hard questions:

• What real value am I creating for my students?

• Are my teachers respected by our students?

• Are my students employable if my 5 big customers don’t come next year?

• Am I a thought leader in some technical areas? Which ones?

• Can I survive bad job conditions in any one industry?

• When job situation worsens, will more students come to my college, or

less?

• If we close shop, will society (or the nation) miss us?


Is there a real need to change?

• Yes, I am just an employment exchange, with a four year delay. So where’s the problem?

• There are three problems with this:

• Your focused students miss out on their jobs of choice as the Big Jobs come first.

• And your Mech students will land IT jobs as those come in. And the best “core companies” are left to select the students left over by the IT giants.

• Even your best CSE students may not get those niche jobs (e.g. startups) as the volume players get to pick first.

• The system loses if your best and focused students miss their preferred jobs, and the IT-niche and non-IT players, and startups don’t get the best-fit people.

• Others will do the job better

• A host of “others” are taking your unemployables and transforming them – in four months flat. At a fraction of your cost. And the industry just loves them!

• What will you do when a monster.com comes into your space? In fact, they already are.

• In the marginal “learning value-add” business, some people will take short cuts, and become more “efficient” at this job

• Many colleges encourage copying, and pay money to get their students a job.

• If your learning value-add is not tangible, students won’t see the difference


What could be?

Stanford has incubated Silicon Valley startups, including Google

Sixth Sense was developed by Pranav Mistry at MIT

The kernel of Macintosh is from the UNIX flavour at Berkeley


Let us define some goals

• Mandatory goals

• Students get the fundamental concepts of their engineering discipline

• Engineering students must enjoy problem solving

• Students have the confidence and capability to question

• And also learn the right questions to ask

• Students can articulate their thoughts and express in a global language

• Students are ethical, and abhor short cuts

• Students are collaborative, and learn to work with diverse people

• Faculty are focused on ensuring the students learn

• To do this, they are not limited by class hours, or syllabus

• Students are employable

• If no company is recruiting, they will not sit at home waiting for an interview call.


Some more goals

• Desirable goals

• Students can create a point of view they don’t hesitate in expressing

• Students have initiative to learn – and go beyond the syllabus (and

college) to learn. Exams are not the primary driver for learning

• Students are inspired to make a difference to their country

• Students have at least one interest area outside the core academic

curriculum

• Students have the capacity to learn new things, and on their own

• Faculty is inspiring

• Faculty has collaboration with industry, and one other academic institute

• Faculty shows evidence of learning something new, every year


Non goals

• Faculty must ensure our students pass easily

• Put out half page ads that say:

• We have 100% placement in first 2 days of placement

• This IT giant “trains” our students

• Our Mechanical engineers must aspire for IT jobs

• “We must make it easy for our students”

• The educators’ job is not to make it easy – rather it is to create

circumstances for failure – so students learn how to explore, how to fail,

and how to cope with and learn from failure


How to begin?

• First say No to Job Factory

• Does not mean there is no placement. Only that it is not the top-most priority in education.

• Stop accepting the demeaning status of being a mere feeder to industry

• Job of education institute is to build the next generation for the country’s future. Focus on that.

• Focus on Value Creation

• Inspire and Develop Faculty

• Provide real projects

• Deliver “free” output to government, and make a difference

• Collaborate

• With Industry

• With like-minded colleges


Tools for Change – 1 (Collaboration and Leverage)

A cooperative environment where

students look for real problems and solve them.

They seek mentors for guidance, and thus learn.

We proudly ensure that our students solve real

problems of real people.

Social and Biz needs

Learners and

Mentors

Govt

Biz

Society

Engg College

Not just businesses, government and society have many unfulfilled

needs; no one is running after those.


Tools for Change – 2 (Prioritize Learning)

The Real EngineerMentoring

Shared Value

Creation

ExpertReviews

Apprentice(multi-year)

Projects

Expert Lectures

Placement Intern

ExamsTeaching


Tools for Change – 3 (Faculty as Learning Partner)

The New Age

Faculty

InspiringMentor

Learner, Explorer,

Connector

Content Creator

Blogger

Co-learner and Guide in Projects

Efficient Teacher

Knows all answers

Respected at a

Distance

Project Evaluator

Completes Syllabus


Tools for Change – 4 (Define new priorities)

Traditional Priorities

Industry Training

Every one gets a job

Internships

Conferences

Aptitude Tests training

Commn and GD training

Faculty Dev Workshops

New Initiatives

Value Creation Workshops

Right jobs for right people

Industry Mentors

Collaborations

Incubation Labs

Real World Projects

Faculty Apprenticeship


Tools for Change – 5 (Define new metrics)

Traditional Metrics

100% Placement

Average Salary = 5.5 lakhs

98% Pass

50% of our Faculty are Ph.D.

Average 5 papers per faculty

Our Faculty train at IIT for 8 days

New Metrics

90% of our students produced Program with 1000+ lines of code

80% of our students reported satisfaction with their first job, and stayed there for 4+ years

80% of our Top 20% students got their first preference jobs

70% of our students are happy and excited pursuing a technical career

50% of our students say they are inspired by someone within our college

40% of our Faculty actively collaborate with industry

5000 mid-career engineers took courses with us last year


Some unconventional role models for Academics

• Khan Academy

• Questioned and redefined the traditional model of homework and

classwork

• Students learn at their pace

• Teachers can micro-analyse student performance and tune their teaching

• Popular Internet Tools

• Students spend 2 hours every evening at Facebook. How can we

leverage that habit to our advantage?

• If celebrities get so much leverage out of Twitter, why not our teachers?

• Amazon.com – they rate books through popular opinion – how can we

use similar concepts in education?

• Blogs, LinkedIn communities: how are we using such popular concepts?


We are in this cause, together

• The current cosy model was non-existent 10 years back

• So there’s no reason to believe this is the only way.

• The cause is big

• The aspirations of our children

• The future of our nation

• The alternative

• The world won’t allow the easy ride for too long – we have become pricier

as well

• China is already ahead – others, too, will leave us behind

• Businesses and Education must collaborate for change, like never

before

• Do we really have a choice?

India | USA | UK | Germany | Sweden | Belgium | France | Switzerland | UAE | Singapore | Australia | Japan | China

Kalyan Banerjee

Parthasarathy N S

Academic industry relationships the past present future

Documents

focused students

students employable

class students

syllabus students

sweat students

students placement

mech students

best cse students