Punjab CM Badal emphasises vocational training, skill development

Highlighting the role of vocational training in higher education, Badal said, “Although India is the youngest nation in the world with more than 60 per cent of its population under 30 years of age, it is unfortunate that only 3 per cent is trained with vocational skills. This is in sharp contrast to countries like Korea, which has 96 per cent population trained in vocational skills, and Japan and European countries like Germany and France where more than 80 professionals are trained with technical skills.”

[related-post]

Minister of State for HRD Ram Shankar Katheria, chairman of UGC Review Committee Hari Gautam, EPSI president and chancellor of VIT University G Viswanathan and others were also present. Vice-chancellors and heads of the institutions of more than 50 universities and 100 colleges across India took part in the summit.

Vishawnathan encouraged the universities and institutions to take a leap forward in the direction to impart technical and vocational training as a part of their academic curriculum. He urged the government to take steps in reviewing the higher education policy in India so that issues like low gross enrollment ratio implementation of ranking and accreditation process, greater autonomy for private institutions, reducing or eliminating process of approvals and NOCs can be addressed.

H Chaturvedi, alternate president, EPSI and director BMTEC, Greater Noida, said encouraging entrepreneurship and start-up revolution were two remedies for solving the problem of poor employability in India. At the summit, the gathered educationists discussed ways to help higher education institutions work efficiently to produce students with quality skill training to improve employability options.

“Vocational education should be termed as professional education and it should be integrated with changing industry requirements as the students passing out from universities and institutions will have to be absorbed by the industry,” Gautam.