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Financial Express Article, 04/2010, Ganesh Natarajan
 
 
It was not too long ago that the war for talent had led to strange situations emerging in the interaction between companies and academic institutions. Major firms were showing up on engineering campuses at the end of the sixth or sometimes even the fifth semester and making offers so early that the further education processes would get stymied by students losing motivation after securing their jobs. Training programs for fresh inductees were long and intended to teach in six months what the institutions had been unable to do in four years. And the high double digit attrition levels in the IT firms and sometimes a laughable three digit attrition percentage in BPO meant that recruiting departments had to work around the clock sometimes just to ensure that their companies stayed in the same place in terms of manpower.
With the revival of the fortunes in the tech sector post the good quarter reported by most IT firms, there is a definite concern that the relative peace and low single digit attrition enjoyed by firms throughout the previous year may now be over and a free for all battle for fresh and lateral talent would start all over again. Hopefully this will not happen because companies have become wiser in the last many quarters and excellent programs like the one offered by Global Talent Track and Aspire are now available to enable both corporate and colleges to bridge the employability gap and ensure that the graduating talent has the requisite industry ready skills and attitude to hit the ground running within weeks of being recruited. Whether it is outsourced process migration and management skills, remote infrastructure management, software engineering or even package implementation, skills are being disseminated through classrooms and technology enabled learning on a just in time basis and there is reason to believe that the next few years will see much better prepared entrants to our industry.
There are positive signs in education policies too ever since Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and Planning Commission Members Sam Pitroda and Narendra Jadhav assumed office in 2009, Education in India is undergoing an overhaul. Starting with the recently enacted right to free education statute, the HRD ministry is already working on legislation for an education tribunal - to resolve disputes between students, institutions and teachers. A Bill to establish multiple private accreditation agencies, monitored by a regulator is being considered. Deliberations are also on to set up a National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER), a single autonomous body to replace the existing education councils, also suggested by the Yashpal committee report on renovation and rejuvenation of higher education. Minister Sibal is advocating FDI in the education sector as a priority for the government and the proposed Foreign Education Bill will help supplement government spending on higher education and is generating a lot of excitement among potential investors and academic institutions.
The idea of amending the Constitution to set up a higher education commission and legislation to create it is already with the Prime Minister’s Office and other relevant ministries. Simultaneously, MHRD has also moved bills to check educational malpractices by institutions, on educational tribunals, 14 world class innovation universities, accreditation system and a concept note on the ‘brain gain’ policy. The Indian Government plans to set up a new Education Commission to facilitate seamless entry of foreign players in higher education among other things. The proposed NCHER will start functioning before the beginning of academic year 2010-11 and will have the best of both- Yashpal Committee and the National Knowledge Commission, bodies which recommend paradigm shifts in higher education regulation. Existing regulatory bodies like University Grants Commission and the All India Council for Technical Education will cease to exist once the commission starts functioning.
If even eighty percent of these proposals get through the political quicksand in this year, there will be a transformation of the education system and a revolution in talent availability in this country. In an optimistic scenario, students will have the choice of both Indian and foreign providers of high quality learner centric education and whether it is liberal arts or technology schools and graduate education and research in technology and management, the industry should rightfully expect better qualified products from the academic sector. And the availability of executive management programs of high quality should serve the needs of industry for building domain and general management skills that will enable better value propositions and a move “up the value chain” that has been talked about for many years now. Indian companies have realised that the best way to attract enable and retain talent is to catch them young well trained and polished by the academic institutions with some help from finishing schools and provide them lifelong learning opportunities to build long and rewarding careers within the organisation !
   
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