Skill Universities: Centres of Excellence or Ivory Towers!!

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 Skill Universities, as a concept included in the National Skills Policy 2015 has become fashionable in the Indian Skills ecosystem. A number of such Universities have already come up and many more are in the process of setting up.

At the top level, the development of Human Resource is divided between MSDE and MHRD, which must converge to  become one big HRD Ministry with two major verticals of Education and Skills under one Cabinet Minister. The recent portfolio allocation of appointing one Cabinet Minister for both the Ministries was a positive move, hopefully next step should be to merge the two. 

At the next level, the UGC will have to make special provisions for these Skills Universities to optimise their functioning. An example to support the points is the guidelines for hiring of trainers, which must be at least in as much detail as for hiring of the Assistant Professors and above. These Universities may aim to enhance the social aspiration of the potential students alongside meeting the Industry's demand for skilled human resource, but in the current form, fall short of even enhancing the aspirations and career progression of their own Master Trainers and Trainers by positioning them below the Assistant Professors due to lack of suitable hiring guidelines. The UGC faculty hiring  guidelines in their current form are designed for the conventional universities whereas, the focus of Skill Universities is in favour of skills development.

At the operational level, the challenge continues to be that of capacity building of human resource deployed in these Universities (exceptions are not the rule)  in terms of clarity of concept, the strategic vision, identification of niche areas arrived at by a deliberate and detailed market scan or a labour market study, which may add value to their contribution to Nation building in a meaningful way, build their own brand value and motivate them to optimise performance and output, instead of spreading too thin on the ground in a futile attempt to cover the whole spectrum of National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) from level 1 to 10.

The selection of sectors / sub sectors and the niche courses as per market demand is the key to success. A judicious approach may be to leave what is being done by other Universities and thousands of skill training centres across the country.  A large canvas still remains untouched by the existing Universities and Skill Centres which could become the niche area of some of the Skill Universities in the areas of say; Town Planning, Traffic Management, Road Designs, the bouquet of skills required to operationalise the concept of Smart Cities, Environment Management, Water Management, Skill development of Human Resource required to manage the Skill India Mission from grass root to policy level including trainers, assessors, centre heads, training establishment heads, skill standard writers, content writers and developers, technology providers, nodal organisations like the NSDC, NCVET, Govt officers in the role of designing and managing large scale skill development schemes, Industry 4.0 technologies..... this is just an illustrative list. 

Skill Universities have great potential. The hope is in harnessing it well so that they become Centres of Excellence and not just Ivory Towers. 


Location: India

Comments

  1. S Manish Singh27 August 2021 at 17:41

    Absolutely agree. There is much need for deliberation as to what will make these work, what it needs and how. Just regurgitation, old wine in new bottles is only going to delay remedies and give more time for the rot to spread.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Arvind Passey27 August 2021 at 18:15

    Interesting post... will read again at a later date. - Arvind Passey - Blog: www.passey.info

    ReplyDelete
  3. Srihari27 August 2021 at 18:19

    Very well said. Coming from an insider, the views expressed are candid and needs prompt attention by the policy makers.
    Does UGC even recognize these "Skill Universities" mushrooming around the country.

    Personally, I am allergic to the word CoE. What I have seen is most CoEs are shadily funded marketing initiatives of a few MNCs with deep pockets who wish to raise their user base and again popularity.

    ReplyDelete

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