| | 8 April 2019HIGHERReviewIN MY VIEWIndia is a very unique market with moderate demand for fresh engineering graduates. Having said that, India produces close to 1.5 Million engineering graduates every year, but the irony is only few of those are employed, others have to settle either for non-engineering based jobs or self-employment. There is a need for fundamental shift in the overall technical higher education system as well as building innovation culture in the early days of higher education. Except Tier 1 institutes and other prestigious institutes, most engineering colleges are unable to provide engineering education to their students that would fetch them a decent job. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has approved the progressive closure of more than 410 colleges across India during the period 2014 ­ 2017 due to substandard of education. There are skill gaps due to not so good standard of engineering education. In a recent study NASSCOM predicted that by 2022 as many as 6 million skilled emploees will be required in cyber security but not so many professionals are available.The need of the hour is to revamp higher education system through continuous innovation to not only to upskill engineers, but in some cases to reskill them. So how do we do that? This has to be done in "Three-in-a-box" approach with hand in hand collaboration of Academia, Industry & Government. Essentially, few new ingredients have to be added in order to upgrade the overall higher education system which are "Built-in Innovation System"; "Industry Driven Internships"; "Technology Based Reskilling"; "Cross College Exchange" and "In-house Learning & Development". Now let us examine these in detail. 1. Built-in Innovation System:Universities and colleges must setup an innovation system from an early stage (Semester I) where students should be encouraged to bounce their new ideas and do something on their own. For e.g. developing a new product or solution and showcasing. In each semester there must be a 24 hours Hackathon planned, at end of that each group should be able to demonstrate. To encourage more participation there should be grade points attached to this activity By Manish Misra, Chief Innovation Officer at PanasonicHIGHER EDUCATION OVERHAUL THROUGH INNOVATIONManish Misra
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