Gap between academia and the industry - A thought

Long time back one of the staff in my university administration commented that an education institution is there to impart degrees not jobs. Was he true or just candid?

Well he was not exactly aware about the processes that are in place to ensure that a graduate lands up with a decent career. There are career counseling cells, Training and Placement Officers and various other units who help a student take next steps for his or her career. There are campus visits by various companies for hiring potential freshers. However these visits are usually limited to professional courses. Educational institutions offering specialized courses attract the highest number of companies from the relevant industry, breeds of the IITs, IIMs and top notch central universities take the lions share when industry goes on a hiring spree.

My point of focus and concern are the educational institutions which lack in their expertise and vision to gear their students for their foray into the big bad world of professional industry. Is it a vision or resources that many institutions lack which result in not-so-ready-for-job graduates and companies think twice before finalizing such an institute for campus visit or simply dont-care attitude. I think latter is not true given the level of competition.

The other side of story
-----------------------
Industry would love to have some degree of professional skills in the fresh graduates they hire both soft and technical. That is the reason why many companies spend much on induction programs and training sessions for the selected candidates. Big companies have a built-in mechanism for such programs oiled and in-place with time, whilst small companies prefer to hire experienced persons reducing the training cost, if freshers are hired then at a very low CTC than their big CMM level counterparts.

Being on both side of the fence, I do understand and believe that both the academia and industry have their requirements and expectations from each other. Academia would love to have more of industry participation in honing skills of their graduates so that their employability factor . Vis-a-vis industry would care for a more ready-on-the-floor type of hires fresh from college.

So where does the problem lie or rather the solution. Frankly speaking right now I don’t know, but this is a question bouncing in my mind for quite sometime.

Googling and surfing on the net has resulted in some interesting links, articles, case studies and anecdotes which did hinted at the same issue. India is on the good side of a resource pool which is youthful and educated but less employable.

I did come across some good Samaritans who are working in the same direction but with varied paths. One such set-up is co-cubes (http://www.cocubes.com/)

excerpt from their website homepage..

"The word CoCubes comes from the first two alphabets of three words, connecting colleges and companies. The idea is to bring a paradigm shift in campus recruitment by bringing all colleges, recruiters, training firms onto a single platform. We are the pioneers in online campus recruitment and currently swamped with colleges wanting to go online and corporate looking for an efficient and effective campus recruitment process. To know more about us click here "

I know there are many more such helps available and another one doing a pioneering work is http://www.siliconindia.com/ in online mentoring and making easy for graduates to interact with industry professionals.

I strongly believe that this is a need of the hour .. a bridge for the gap between academia and the industry. The more there are such bridges the better it is. Destination should be same 'Enhanced employability of indian graduates', paths can be different.

What say? Any comments.