Page 56 - EW JULY PDF

Special Report

to be maintained and serviced. With
new age consumer products and ser-
vices having penetrated to tier-II and
tier-III towns and cities and even into
the rural hinterland, colleges, acade-
mies and institutes as also self-styled
skilling enterprises are reporting a
demand surge for short-term courses
from the huge army of India’s unem-
ployed, under-employed and youth
eager to maintain and service them.
F ORTUNATELY, THERE’S

been good market response
to the urgent demand for
vocational courses. The
Central government’s National Skills
Development Corporation (NSDC) has Ravichandran: beneficial development Chaturvedi: demand surge
promoted 38 Sector Skill Councils to
set standards and draw up curricu- water harvesting and management, short-term diploma programmes,
lums for vocations. Simultaneously, electrical house wiring, fire safety, have sprouted across the country.
several private universities, notably disaster management and healthcare Prominent among them is Centurion
the Bhopal-based AISECT Group of waste management. “This year, there University (CU), Bhubaneswar
four universities in Bilaspur (Chhat- has been a surge in admission appli- (estb.2010) promoted by visionary ed-
tisgarh), Rabindranath Tagore Uni- cations for vocational courses,” says ucationist Dr. Mukti Kant Mishra,
versity in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Siddharth Chaturvedi, president which trains youth to qualify as ma-
AISECT University in Hazaribagh of the AISECT Group. chinists, fitters, welders, electricians,
(Jharkhand), Dr. C.V. Raman Uni- Favorably, even if belatedly, sev- plumbers, mechanics and retail assis-
versity in Vaishali (Bihar) have also eral vocational training and skilling tants in the university’s seven Gram
sprung up to reskill and upskill the higher education institutions which Tarang satellite training centres in
country’s youth. like AISECT and RTNU provide the Odisha, Andhra, Jharkhand and As-
“AISECT has partnered with the conventional three-year degree pro- sam. This path-breaking university
National Skill Development Corpora- grammes, as well as dozens of skill- was featured as a cover story in Edu-
tion to provide skills-based training to ing programmes as electives and cationWorld way back in 2014 (see
1.3 million lakh youth by 2020. Un- https://www.educationworld.in/
der this partnership, 12 vocational Skills education laggard centurions-40000-score-card/).
training academies have been set However while AISECT and
up that offer over 150 low-cost, high Upper secondary % of Centurion universities offer con-
quality university-certified under- students in workforce ventional arts, science and com-
graduate, postgraduate, certificate vocational with formal merce, and engineering degree
skills
programmes
and diploma courses,” proclaims the (%) training programmes with skills subjects
AISECT Group website. Australia 51.4 NA as electives and diploma certificate
For instance, AISECT’s Rabin- Finland 67.8 70 programmes, Shri Vishwakar-
dranath Tagore National Uni- France 39.3 NA ma Skill University, Gurgaon
versity (RTNU) offers 51 skilling Germany 48.8 75 (SVSU, estb.2016) whose vision
programmes under the heads of me- statement unambiguously states
chanical, electronics, electricals and Japan 22.0 80 that it has “been promoted by the
communication, civil engineering South Korea 17.2 96 Haryana state government to focus
and computers & IT. Among them: United Kingdom 40.1 68 on quality of skill education, as-
automobile maintenance, refrigera- United States NA 52 pired by students and admired by
tion and air-conditioning, CNC pro- China 39.5 26 industry, nationally and interna-
gramming and machining; handsets India 6.2 5.4 tionally,” is an entirely skilling uni-
repair; TV and home appliances re- versity. It awards B.Voc degrees in
pair, server management, optical (Source: OECD, EW compilation) a wide range of disciplines includ-
cables splicing, solar technician, ing entrepreneurship, mechanical-

56 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2023