academic industry relationships the past present future
TRANSCRIPT
© 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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 3
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 4
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 5
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 6
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.
Confidential - for limited circulation only 7
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?
Confidential - for limited circulation only 8
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 9
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 10
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.
Confidential - for limited circulation only 11
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 12
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 13
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 14
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.
Confidential - for limited circulation only 15
Tools for Change – 2 (Prioritize Learning)
The Real EngineerMentoring
Shared Value
Creation
ExpertReviews
Apprentice(multi-year)
Projects
Expert Lectures
Placement Intern
ExamsTeaching
Confidential - for limited circulation only 16
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 17
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 18
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
Confidential - for limited circulation only 19
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?
Confidential - for limited circulation only 20
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