Cambridge University to conduct admission process in India from this year

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February 23, 2017

In order to ease the admission process for Indian students, University of Cambridge is unveiling a new initiative under which its admission staff will travel to India to conduct interviews for admission. It will help Indian students in a way that applicants need not travel to Britain for the admission process.

The initiative was announced as the university launched its version of the UK-India Year of Culture. It includes a large number of events and activities in India and Britain throughout the year that marks 70 years of India’s independence.

According to Cambridge University, from 2017, university admission staff will visit Indian schools and meet students face-to-face in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. An academic team will visit India in autumn to conduct admissions interviews, the university further added.

In this regard, the university further said, vice-chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz is in New Delhi for a fundraising event. He is expected to reconfirm Cambridge’s commitment to attract the brightest and best students from India.

Education and employable skills top CSR spends by IT firms: Nasscom Report

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Akash

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February 23, 2017

Education and employable skills are major investment areas by most of the information technology (IT) and financial service sector companies under corporate social responsibility (CSR), revealed a report by Nasscom Foundation.

Nasscom foundation report titled as “Catalysing Change Through CSR” was released on September 22, 2017 at the CSR Leadership Conference. The report says, “About half the companies (70) interviewed have spent more than 70 per cent of their CSR in education and employable skills initiatives”.

Big corporate firms such as Sonata Software, Hinduja Global Solutions, Wipro, HP Inc, Tech Mahindra, Cognizant Technologies, Mphasis, and Aricent were featured in the survey.

Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, Nasscom Foundation, said, “Education and employable skills are the key to most of India’s social problems. An industry, which has grown solely by investing into knowledge and key skills, realises the difference a skilled knowledge society can make and therefore, a major chunk of the CSR funds has been dedicated to education and employable skills”.

According to the report, more than half of the companies based in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharahstra, Telangana and the National Capital Region, are now also investing areas other than non-headquarter geographies.

The report, which maps the spending trend in the third year of operationalisation of the CSR mandate, also noted that companies were placing greater importance on monitoring the outcome by integrating technology.

“Companies have become increasingly aware of outcome assessment and close monitoring implementing agencies as evidenced by the growing frequency of report submissions from partner organisations, and greater on-ground frequency of CSR team,” the report added.

IITs to add 460 more seats

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Akash

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February 22, 2017

Country’s premier technology institutes, Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) have added 460 more seats from this year. Increased number of seats will take the total number of seats in IITs to 11,032, help more engineering aspirants to realize their dream of studying in IITs.

The seats will mostly be added in the new IITs. Proposals for increasing the intake have been sent by the IITs located at Bhubaneshwar, Hyderabad, Ropar, Jodhpur, Patna, Indore, Mandi and Jammu to their respective senates and the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Board.

The final announcement of total number of seats for 2017-18 academic year will be announced by the JEE board soon after senates clear these proposals. “This shows that IITs have been able to improve their infrastructure and can now accommodate more students”, said Y Udaykumar, coordinator of the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) of the IITs and the NITs.

However, some other IITs, such as the ones at Dharwad, Goa and Tirupati, still operate out of rented campuses and have not been able to increase their student strength.

Besides, none of the older IITs has sought a hike in seats, hinting at space crunch in these institutes. One of the only possible ways to hike the intake is by scrapping some of the unpopular courses, seats of which are generally remain vacant.

“In a meeting on February 3, the HRD ministry gave the go ahead for closure or suspension of some of the unpopular disciplines in order to cut down on seats going vacant,“ an IIT official, who attended the meeting, said on condition of anonymity .

All centrally funded technical institutes that participate in joint counselling are directed by the HRD ministry to revise their seat strength. But, it should be done only after a proper review of vacant seats, employment opportunities, national requirement, faculty strength and available infrastructure.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella launched “Project Sangam”

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Akash

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February 22, 2017

IT major’s Microsoft born CEO, Satya Nadella has launched “Project Sangam” on February 22, 2016. The project will be a major push for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Skill India Mission. The project, through professional networking website LinkedIn, acquired by Microsoft last year, will help the government not only to train but also to assist people in getting jobs.

“Project Sangam”, with its aim to employ and empower, will commence from Andhra Pradesh.

“The company will allow people to enroll through Aadhaar cards and later utilize LinkedIn to manage their profiles,” Nadella said during Microsoft’s prestigious “Future Decoded” event.

Under the project, as soon as the training is completed, the company will update candidates’ profiles for employers to shortlist and hire the skilled workers. The candidates will receive job options according to their skill sets.

Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn was one of the largest pacts in global social media space last year billed $26.2 billion.

Kerala government planning to set up International Ayurvedic research Institute at Kannur

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Akash

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February 22, 2017

Kerala government has decided to set up an International Ayurvedic Research institute at Kannur. A budget of Rs 300 crore has been decided for the university during the 13th five year plan.

The Central Government will assist the state government in implementing the project. The state cabinet has allocated the principle amount for the project in the presence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Along with this the state cabinet has also decided to set up Kerala Blood Bank society of International standards. It will be set up jointly by Thiruvananthapuram Citizens India Charitable Trust, Health Department with technical assistance of WHO.

According to a press release, the state government has also decided to strengthen the Public Works Department’s design, investigation and quality control wings. The three design units presently in the department will be reconstituted into seven units.

Education Technology: Top 5 Prospective Developments

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Akash

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February 22, 2017

21^st century is the century of technical innovations. The technical revolution has affected every sector positively. Education sector has also witnessed the technical influence in teaching and learning methodologies writes Akash Tomer of Elets News Network (ENN).

Nowadays the mobile phones have more content in various forms (video, audio, pictorial, graphical etc) than found in the libraries. Massive Open and Online Courses (MOOCS) are aimed at unlimited participation of learners and teachers globally. Now, after such a revolutionary transition of education sector, what will be the prospective developments in the sector to develop effective educational system?

Learning Management systems (LMS):

Learning: it is used to deliver education courses or training programs.

Management: It helps schools or educational institutes to organise the learning courses. It helps to create a course, modify a course, assign them to students, grade them, etc.

System: LMS is a computer programme that helps students to learn and manage the curses systematically.

LMS is not just limited to the educational institutions. It has diversified customers from large multinational enterprises to small and medium businesses, organisations from United Nations to your local co-op ones, including Non-Government Organisations and non-profits, governments and their agencies, traditional educational institutions like schools, universities, colleges etc and online and eLearning based educational institutions

Global E-learning platforms:

In this era of globalization, schools and universities are emphasising more and more to educate children who are aware not only about the local cultures and trends but easily accommodate themselves at the global level. From small business setups to multinational companies, there is a huge demand of entrepreneurs and professionals who have a deep understanding of various cultures of the world. Global E-learning platforms are the information systems used for online teaching or to supporting traditional teaching. The software system designed to create a virtual learning environment through which it is possible to deliver training courses, administer and monitor them and access a series of facilities and arrangements. Such platforms also help educational institutes to share best practices in learning, to access best available content and to acquire best available technology solutions from around the world.

Teaching Assistance:

Lectures of best teachers all around the globe are freely available over internet in form of video lectures that may help teachers to improve their traditional way of teaching using latest technologies. Latest technology innovations would facilitate anytime, anywhere learning. Teaching assistance to students will be on their demand and help them get their queries resolved instantaneously and facilitate instant access to information. Increased use of technology in education sector ensures two things: first, quick and appropriate content delivery even in rural areas of India. Secondly, teachers will now completely be transformed. Traditional teacher will soon become leaders, coaches and facilitators who will focus on development of real world skills. It will help in creating future entrepreneurs and the kind of people future employers will look to hire.

Enhanced Use of Virtual Reality:

Virtual Reality can present complex data in an accessible way to students which is both fun and easy to learn. Companies like Google, Samsung and HTC are investing billions of dollars in developing education related applications for VR technology. The technology enables large groups of students to interact with each other and their teachers within a three dimensional environment. Moreover, these students can interact with the objects in that environment in order to discover more about them. 21^st century children have grown up with technology from a very early age and unlike adults, do not have any fear or hesitation in using it.

Artificial intelligence:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next giant leap in the field of learning, education and technology. AI may not ever be able to truly replace human grading, it’s getting pretty close. It’s now possible for teachers to automate grading for nearly all kinds of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank testing and automated grading of student writing may not be far behind. A new breed of AI toys will tremendously help teachers and counselors working with special needs children. These toys and programmable robots are already enabling children with AHD and Autism to learn quicker and better.

65% of IT employees not re-trainable: Capgemini CEO

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Akash

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February 20, 2017

The Indian IT industry is eyeing at a shift in nature of work due to increasing use of digital technologies but according to a top executive of a leading IT firm, majority of the workforce are not versed with required emerging skill-sets that may results into high job losses at the middle and senior levels.

Srinivas Kandula, Chief Executive Officer, Capgemini-India said, “I am not very pessimistic, but it is a challenging task and I tend to believe that 60-65 per cent of them are just not trainable”. The Indian arm of the French IT major employs nearly 1 lakh engineers in the country.

At the annual Nasscom leadership summit, Kandula said, “A large number of them cannot be trained. Probably, India will witness the largest unemployment in the middle-to-senior leve”.

Raising concerns over the quality of IT workforce available, he said that out of 3.9 million IT employees in the country, most of them come from low-grade engineering colleges which do not follow rigorous grading patterns for students in their zeal to maintain good records. The industry, driven by yield-seeking investors, has not invested enough to upgrade the skill-sets of its employees, he added.

Recently, Nasscom has also raised the same concerns revealing that there is a need to re-train up to 1.5 million, or nearly half of its sectoral workforce.

Showing his concern over the wages offered to a fresher, Kandula said, hiring of students majorly from lower-grade engineering colleges is the reason of negative rise in wages by a huge margin. He further added, the current package for a fresher is around 3.5 lakkh per annum as compared to that of 2.25 lakh per annum two decades ago. It clearly suggests a massive decrease in real wages from an inflation-adjusted perspective.

Funding freeze causes 50% drop in recruitment

By

Akash

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February 20, 2017

The prolonged funding winter has caused the 50% drop in hiring at startups by 10-50%, revealed recruitment firms that hire for startups.

Particularly ecommerce, logistics, grocery and food delivery companies have put the hiring on hold or are laying off its employees due to their inability to secure funds. Financial Technology companies are the only exceptions that affected less by the funding scarcity.

Current hiring depression is making it tough for the startups to hire best talent from premium business schools or top engineering colleges of the country. Moreover, lack of funding is also obstructing startups to attract top talent from larger companies. Startups need combination of best and experienced minds to enhance their business and to focus more on technology innovations.

Explaining the current situation of declined hiring, Joseph Devasia, managing director for India at Antal International, said, “We were getting about 100 requisitions a month from startups for senior and midlevel hiring 12 months ago. Today, we get a maximum of 3040”.

Ashish Sanganeria, partner at executive search firm Longhouse Consulting, said that hiring is down particularly at the mid and lower levels of startups and inability of startups to recruit senior executives is more disturbing. “Among the top 10 ecommerce companies, there have been only 3540 hires at the leadership level in the past six months, while the number was in triple digits in early 2016,” Sanganeria added.

Along with this the recent wave of layoffs by the companies cut down the costs is also a big worry. According to research platform Xeler8, in 2016, startups in India let go about 9,200 employees compared with about 5,500 in 2015. According to a leading business newspaper’s report, Snapdeal is in the process of laying off at least 1,000 employees.

“We are seeing more open positions in startups in the financial technology services sector post demonetisation across all three levels— senior, mid and entry,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, cofounder of staffing firm TeamLease Services. “These companies are expanding aggressively and job requirements have almost tripled.”

Siemens and BML Munjal University tie up to open centre of excellence

By

Akash

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February 18, 2017

Siemens, the global manufacturing and electronics giant and BML Munjal University joined hands together to set up a Centre of Excellence. The Hero Group promoted varsity is building a world-class integrated skill development infrastructure with the multinational company.

There will be nine laboratories of different fields at the centre to help inculcating specific skills in students and to equip them with expertise in engineering and manufacturing sectors.

The Centre of Excellence will also help the University and the company to bridge the gap between technical education and the industry needs and to help engineering students to learn industry-relevant skills.

MSRDC and IIT Bombay to conduct road safety course

By

Akash

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February 18, 2017

In order to control the growing number of accidents on highways, Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) is chalking out plans with IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Bombay to conduct a road safety course for government engineers. Transport activists welcomed the move.

As per a report of a leading newspaper, a study on the vehicular traffic and accident-prone zones on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway was conducted that revealed, from 2002 to 2014, 14,500 accidents occurred on the 94-km stretch of the expressway that led to a minimum 1,400 deaths.

Kiran Kurundkar, Joint Managing Director, MSRDC, said, “The subject of road safety finds a very small space in the curriculum of engineers. It is not given much importance. IIT Bombay felt that this gap could be bridged by conducting a certificate course on road safety to train government engineers. We are yet to decide the details”.

Commenting on the lack of safety education among civil engineers, transport expert Ashok Datar said, “When a road is designed there isn’t much consideration for safety and it is more about speed. There needs to be more emphasis on road safety.”

“The MSRDC, being a road construction body, needs to be more conscious about road safety at the construction stage itself. The awareness level of road safety is so bad that whatever one does about it is good,” Datar added.

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