editorial
Bridging the Skills Gap in Education Engineering education in India today stands as one of the biggest educational systems globally. The dearth of skilled and technically trained manpower has only added fuel to the process. Correspondingly, however, there are innumerable complexities associated with the mushrooming number of engineering institutes. Not only do we need to nurture the large number of student aspirants vying for an engineering degree, but also look into concerns of providing quality in education and industry relevant skills. An engineering degree will not serve any purpose if it does not qualify as appropriate for industry requirements. While comparing engineering graduates of the developed nations, it is evident that they possess highly technical skills which gives them the confidence to handle complex problems. Such skills are lacking in their Indian counterparts. Part of the problem is the need to identify certain foundation skills, which then becomes the governing principle for evaluating the quality of all academic programs. These necessarily have to be in tandem with business demands. Sprucing up technology skills is one of the important challenges to meet the demand for quality education. The twentieth century has already witnessed an extraordinary growth in education technology. There is no indication that the speed of expansion will be any less in the current century. The shelf life of majority of the technologies is by now much lower than the duration of any three or four year degree program. The speedy trend of technology becoming obsolete is compelling the educational system to buck up and enable graduating students to be highly skilled in multiple aspects.
Advisory Board Prof. Asha Kanwar, Vice President, Commonwealth of Learning Dr. Jyrki Pulkkinen, CEO, Global eSchools & Communities Initiative (GeSCI) Shri Subhash C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Department School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India Prof. V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira GandhiI National Open University (IGNOU)
This is where skills development becomes imperative. And not just in the subject knowledge, but also in a host of soft skills which are the pre-requisites for climbing the ladder in a highly competitive economy. Educational institutes in our day have realised the importance of life long learning and self learning skills - in wake of the rapid trend of technological obsolesce - and want to ensure that their student inculcate the abilities of information retrieval and acquisition of latest knowledge. The new age requirement of the globalised world means that all stakeholders have to be on their toes. Rising up to challenges and meeting ever increasing pressures can only be acquired through reforms in the educational system, skills training and imparting education par excellence. The future of India lies in our hands.
Dr. Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@digitallearning.in
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digital LEARNING
OCTOBER 2010
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