HT CAMPUS CONCLAVE

The panelists included:

1. Prof. M L Singla, Dean of Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi

2. Prof. S K Garg, Dean of Academics at Delhi Technological University

3. Prof. Irfan A Rizvi, Director of the Jaypee Business School

4. Mr. Amit Malik, Chief Human Resource Officer of Aviva Life Insurance

5. Mr. R Anand, Head of the Global Centre of Excellence at HCL Technologies

Mr. Rajesh Mohapatra, Executive Editor at Hindustan Times moderated the hour-long discussion. The discussion identified niche factors that are essential to current market demands and explored avenues to accentuate employability via education. The major points of the panel discussion included:

1. Skill development should be initiated at school level,

2. Need for de-glamorization of degree to provide equal opportunities for all

3. Advocating vocational education on a large scale for the country to excel as a whole,

4. Look at ways to better the average work force instead of focussing only on the 100 percentile getters,

5. Urgent industry investment in planning and shaping the curriculum and skill development with educational institutions

6. Find out ways to make everyone employable

The panel unanimously agreed that change is the need of the hour for the country to be youth friendly to allow them explore great opportunities within and grab it instead of taking the immense talent pool abroad.

Mr. Mohapatra, in his concluding remarks observed that industry leaders must take the onus of communicating their expectations and make investments to help educationists upgrade their curriculum in order to make graduates more employable.