EMC, provider of IT storage hardware solutions, has tied up with 27 engineering colleges in Pune with the aim to prepare students for careers in the area of information storage and management. EMC will offer students ‘open’ curriculum-based education on topics like cloud computing, big data analytics and information storage and management.

The demand for trained software storage professionals is elevating due to accelerating growth of digital information. According to EMC Zinnov study, private cloud alone in India is expected to create 1 lakh jobs by 2015 from 10,000 in 2011. This demand is unlikely to be met.

Owing to this demand, the EMC Academic Alliance initiative will aim to bridge the skill-gap in a rapidly changing IT environment and prepare students for better employability. Over 120,000 students have been educated till date under this alliance.

The colleges associated with this alliance include Sinhgad College of Engineering, MIT College of Engineering, Sinhgad Institute of Technology and Science, D.Y.Patil Institute of Engineering & Technology and Maharashtra Institute of Technology.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School has launched the Asia Leaders in Financial Institutions (ALFI) programme for senior directors and managing directors in the financial sector. This programme will provide an opportunity for candidates to assume regional and global responsibilities.

The ALFI programme, that will welcome its first cohort in September 2015, will have a curriculum that will be train candidates to strengthen thought leadership, professional competencies and change management skills during the test of times. Training on technological and service innovations would also be part of this curriculum.

S Dhanabalan, Chairman, NUS Business School’s Managemet Advisory Board and Honorary Advisor to Temasek Holdings, stated “The financial sector is becoming increasingly complex, and competition forces institutions and management to stretch the boundaries of business innovation and ethical frameworks. Management leaders in the sector require deeper skills, expertise and a clear sense of what is good for the institution, economy and society. ALFI will certainly help establish future leaders who are able to navigate and build financial institutions that will be relevant in the years ahead.”

After joining NUS alumni network, participants will have lifetime access to the B-School’s executive education programmes. During this time, the candidates will get the chance to visit leading financial institutions in cities such as New York, Beijing and Mumbai to meet top officials and financial sector leaders, over an eight-month period.

TMI e2e Academy, Hyderabad-based training and placement firm, plans to raise US $ 6-8 million in next six months to support its expansion plans. TMI Group is one of India’s largest talent acquisition & talent management network with operations across India, Middle East & Europe.

T Muralidharan, TMI Group Chairman stated, “We are talking to PE firms for raising USD 6-8 million over the next six months to fund our expansion plans. TMI e2E Academy is a training and placement firm for fresh graduates and diploma holders with 0-2 years of work experience.”

TMI e2e had also launched a portal named, Jobsdialog.com, to generate jobs for unskilled labour in SME sector. Since its inception, the portal has till now received 75,000 registrations from employment seekers and about 2,000 registrations from MSMEs employers.

As part of expansion plan, the academy plans to cover entire Andhra Pradesh and Telangana regions by this year. In the next three years, it wants to expand its service to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and the National Capital Region.

With the registered turnover of Rs. 75 crore, the TMI group is planning to achieve a turnover of Rs. 250 crore in the next three years.

IIM Bangalore’s PGP Summer Placements 2015 concluded in record 2.5 days with Amazon and Accenture short listing the maximum number of students. E-commerce giant Amazon made 19 offers while Accenture Management Consulting followed up with 17 offers.

As many as 400 PGP students of IIM Bangalore successfully got through summer internships to be undertaken in April-May 2015.  130 recruiters made offers during this year’s summer placements, the process for which began on October 31 was spread over five interview slots in two and a half days and two pre-processing days. Over 35 students are expected to intern at international locations.

23 per cent of offers made were from management consulting sector. Big recruiters, apart from Accenture Management Consulting, were The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) with 13 offers, McKinsey & Co. with 10 offers, Bain & Co. with 7 offers, A T Kearney with 6 offers. Other prominent recruiters included Roland Berger, Strategy&, Deloitte, PwC Diamond, Alvarez & Marsal, Siemens Management Consulting, and GEP among others. Capgemini, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers also offered consulting profiles.

Around 20 per cent of students secured internships in the banking and financial services segment. International banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Citi Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Nomura hired interns for investment banking and global markets & equities. Other financial institutions offering a range of financial roles included Standard Chartered, ICICI, Edelweiss, DBS, JM Financial, and Avendus Capital. The Blackstone Group, a premier investment and advisory firm, recruited exclusively from IIMB.

The Sales & Marketing roles were offered to 20 per cent of the batch. Hindustan Unilever hired eight interns for domestic and international locations. Top FMCG companies who continued to recruit from IIMB included Proctor & Gamble, ITC, Mondelez, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Reckitt Benckiser. Johnson & Johnson and Marico also offered sales & marketing positions.

10 per cent of the batch will intern with conglomerates in general management, leadership and strategy profiles. Aditya Birla Group with eight offers was the top recruiter under these profiles. TAS, Reliance Industries, C.K. Birla Group, Wipro, Mahindra & Mahindra, General Electric and Saint Gobain also recruited in great numbers under this profile.

Operation profiles across various sectors were offered to around 10 per cent of the batch.

Technology giants like Microsoft, Google, Juniper Networks and Directi participated in the intern recruitment process as well. Big players from e-commerce segment, apart from Amazon, were Flipkart making 10 offers for different profiles including operations. Around five percent offers each were given in information technology and corporate finance functions across various sectors. Tata Steel, Airbus, Larsen & Toubro and Robert Bosch also came up with operations roles. Media houses like Times Group and HT Media visited the campus for the process as well, thus adding diversity to the range of profiles offered.

The HRD ministry recently convened a meeting of state government officials and existing IIT directors to speed up the process of establishing the new IITs in Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

According to sources, while Andhra Pradesh has located a site in Tirupati which has been approved by a site selection committee other states have been a bit slow. Kerala has also finalised a site. In the case of Chhattisgarh state, a final decision has to be made whether the IIT will come up in New Raipur or some other site. Although Goa had also found a site, it is not being considered large enough in area for an IIT and the state government has been asked by the ministry to look for a bigger site. The J&K government has asked district magistrate of Jammu to locate a site. An area of 100 acres is required for an IIT and the land needs to be free of all liabilities.”

 Furthermore, the HRD ministry has to submit affidavit in the Delhi High Court on November 30 for common counseling, after a direction from the High Court. It may be mentioned that the IITs and NITs are working together on a new software that will make possible common counseling so that it can be implemented from 2015-16.

Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) will turn its entire campus into disability-friendly by 2015 with the introduction facilities for special students.

According to the institute, significant additions will include ramps in all the buildings on campus, to facilitate easy access to the ground floors, including all the hostel blocks. The institute will also resurface all the walkways and pathways, which currently have brick-edge con-surfaces. These will be replaced with RCC finish or paving blocks to make them smoother. Thus, movement around the campus including the student’s service area, the micafe plaza, parking areas etc. will be smoother and more accessible. There will also be an addition of a traction lift and hydraulic lifts in the buildings, which will allow quick access to the classrooms.

On November 11, the National Education Day in India, the government will launch a credit equivalent framework from Class 9 to the postgraduate level. This credit transfer system, which comes after a long debate of four years, aspires to make it easier for students and working professionals to switch between education and jobs.

Sharing her personal experience where she had to discontinue her education to work, Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Smriti Zubin Irani said at a panel discussion at the India Economic Summit, “We do not have a credit transfer system within our country that enables the migration of labour across the country. The credit transfer system would facilitate people ‘get back to the education system as and when they desire’.”

It may be mentioned that a similar initiative was made by former HRD minister Kapil Sibal. However, it failed to make any progress.

The Directorate of Primary Education, Maharashtra, has said that principals and heads of state-run schools will be strictly responsible for dysfunctional and unclean toilets in their schools. This follows a diktat from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for clean toilets for school-going children. A showcause notice will be issued to school heads if they fail to provide proper standards of sanitation in their schools as far as toilets are concerned.

“The government is under pressure from the central government to start all school inspections with a toilet inspection. This is a great move to make sure every school will have a functional toilet,” an official said. The central government is also said to be keenly watching every move of the state and weekly reports are sent by each state to MHRD about progress of toilet construction.

Although the project was to be completed by October 31, 2014 the state delayed it and claims it will be completed by December 31, 2014.

The Medical Council of India is all set to revamp the country’s 58-year-old curriculum in medical education. The process includes incorporating the latest medical technology and teaching aids in subjects such as anatomy, pathology and biochemistry at the MBBS level and introduction of new specialities and super-specialities for post-graduation and beyond. The new curriculum and new courses are in the last stage of being finalized.

Furthermore, the council is also planning to obtain a copyright for the curriculum by June 2015. The curriculum will be distributed to medical colleges, which will be required to conduct teachers’ training for the next one year, and by 2016, medical undergraduates can move away from the curriculum established in 1956.