1. Academic Institutes and Businesses
- The past, present and future
November, 2012
© Mindtree limited 2012. Confidential - for limited circulation only

2. Academic institutes and Businesses
Cautious
Education
as part of
Supply
?
Leverage Chain
Parallel
Universes
1985 1995 2005 2015
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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
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4. The impossible is achieved – all 3 stakeholders are happy!
Industry
Captive students
will join us when
we need them
College
The feeder
between the
Students and
Jobs, with a 4-
year delay
Students
Joining an autonomous
college is an automatic
passport to a job
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5. So where‟s the problem?
Joined
90 days no
college
substitute
expecting
for 4 years
easy life
Industry Got a Job +
No tough
recruits Weak Training
technical
more Foundation with no
gate
freshers sweat
Business College
Cannot Faculty
No No intrinsic
scale with with
Learning Desire to
rapid lowered
Agility Learn
change morale
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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.
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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?
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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
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9. What could be?
The kernel of
Macintosh is from
the UNIX flavour at
Sixth Sense was
Berkeley
developed by Pranav
Mistry at MIT
Stanford has
incubated Silicon
Valley startups,
including Google
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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14. Tools for Change – 1 (Collaboration and Leverage)
Govt
Biz
Social Learners Engg
and Biz and
needs Mentors College
Society
A cooperative
Not just businesses, government environment where We proudly ensure that
and society have many unfulfilled students look for real our students solve real
needs; no one is running after problems and solve them. problems of real people.
those. They seek mentors for
guidance, and thus learn.
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15. Tools for Change – 2 (Prioritize Learning)
Expert
Lectures
Placement Intern
Expert
Reviews
Shared Apprentice
Value
Teaching Creation (multi-year)
Exams
The Real
Mentoring Projects
Engineer
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16. Tools for Change – 3 (Faculty as Learning Partner)
Efficient
Teacher Respected
Knows all at a
answers Distance
Content
Learner, Creator
Explorer, Blogger
Completes Project
Connector Evaluator
Syllabus
Inspiring The New Co-learner
Age and Guide
Mentor Faculty in Projects
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17. Tools for Change – 4 (Define new priorities)
Traditional Priorities New Initiatives
Industry Training Value Creation Workshops
Every one gets a job Right jobs for right people
Internships Industry Mentors
Conferences Collaborations
Aptitude Tests training Incubation Labs
Commn and GD training Real World Projects
Faculty Dev Workshops Faculty Apprenticeship
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18. Tools for Change – 5 (Define new metrics)
Traditional
Metrics
New Metrics
90% of our students produced Program with 1000+
100% Placement
lines of code
Average Salary = 80% of our students reported satisfaction with their
5.5 lakhs first job, and stayed there for 4+ years
80% of our Top 20% students got their first
98% Pass preference jobs
70% of our students are happy and excited pursuing
50% of our Faculty a technical career
are Ph.D. 50% of our students say they are inspired by
someone within our college
Average 5 papers
per faculty 40% of our Faculty actively collaborate with industry
Our Faculty train at 5000 mid-career engineers took courses with us last
IIT for 8 days year
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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?
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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?
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21. Kalyan Banerjee
Parthasarathy N S
India | USA | UK | Germany | Sweden | Belgium | France | Switzerland | UAE | Singapore | Australia | Japan | China