Hyderabad, May 16: The department of higher education is starting 25 Skill Development Centres (SDCs), one in each district, in the new academic year to impart specialised skills to students of professional colleges to enhance their employability.
Officials of the department conveyed this to chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy at a meeting held here on Sunday to review the new initiatives and programmes of the department.
He lauded the department for launching Jawahar Knowledge Centres in almost all degree colleges in the state.
The Skill Development Centres will impart 21stcentury skills in critical thinking, problem solving, communication & collaboration, and life-leading. The project is designed on a selfsustaining basis and there will be JKC-like tutorial classes also for students after college hours.
Earlier, addressing the officials, the chief minister said employability of students passing out of engineering, management, computer applications, pharmacy and other professional colleges should be the main focus.
“Producing about four lakh engineering and other professional graduates every year without providing them quality education and employment opportunities is not right,” he said.
The officials informed Reddy that “sandwich courses” were introduced in the professional colleges and a six-month attachment with industry in the third year from 2010-11.
This increases employability of the students and all courses have since been converted to sandwich courses.
Collaboration with the industries department, APSRTC, APTransco, APGenco, BSNL, BHEL, Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and various other industries is being tried out to make this scheme successful.
The officials explained that on the lines of the JKC in degree colleges, The second phase of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP), being implemented in selected engineering colleges and government polytechnics with World Bank’s aid, aims to improve the quality of education and employability of graduates.
While government and university colleges will be aided to the extent of Rs 10 crore, private institutions will receive Rs 4 crore. Of that 75 percent will be the Centre’s share and 25 percent the state government’s.
Other components of the programme are establishment of Centres of Excellence at Rs 5 crore per centre.
For this also, the Centre’s share will be 75 percent and the state’s 25 percent. The programme also includes faculty development for effective teaching (training in pedagogy), improving system management (capacity building to strengthen management) and project management, monitoring and evaluation.
The tentative project outlay is Rs 263 crore and the MoU between the state and central governments has already been signed and sent for final approval.
The project period is four years and will commence soon. In all, 88 colleges had applied for TEQUIP Phase-II.
While 85 of them were permitted to submit development proposals for final selection, 80 colleges have submitted their proposals so far.
–Agencies