Best Practices
Best Practice – 1
1. Title of the Best Practice:
Initiative towards developing entrepreneurship through the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE)
2. Goal:
The Centre for innovation and entrepreneurship is dedicated to promoting and supporting the spirit of entrepreneurship Education among the graduated and graduating students at Vardhaman.
3. Objectives:
- To act as an institutional mechanism for providing various services including information to budding student entrepreneurs.
- To foster better linkages between the institution, industries, and R & D institutions in the region and other related organizations engaged in promoting Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) including NGOs and other Voluntary Organizations.
- To catalyze and promote the development of technology Enterprises and promote employment opportunities.
- To respond effectively to the emerging challenges and opportunities both at the national and international levels relating to SMEs and Micro Enterprises.
4. The Context:
Entrepreneurship support requires additional financing and human resources from universities. Financing can come either from grants, donations, or own revenues. Human resources for entrepreneurship support can either be internally or recruited and developed.
More and more universities in India provide direct support for start-ups through mentoring, grants, and incubation facilities. Start-up support is providing a helping hand in a business startup without taking away the “do it on your own. It is all about making, entrepreneurship support systems accessible and attractive for future entrepreneurs, and about rectifying market and system failures in financing and premises. For universities to be effective, partnerships with entrepreneurship support actors in the territory and beyond are relevant.
Vardhaman College of Engineering has applied for funding support from the following institutions
- NitiAyog – Atal incubation centre
- EDII – Entrepreneurship Awareness camps
- MSNE – Incubation Centre
- AICTE – Sammridhi Scheme
5. Practice:
Entrepreneurs face many challenges in today’s ultra-competitive business world; fortunately, contemporary times have also blessed entrepreneurs with more resources for tackling those problems than ever before.
Diversification: Entrepreneurship education teaches students to recognize and seize diverse opportunities for financial gain. This allows people to work in authentic environments that best suit them. As a result, there is greater individual satisfaction as compared to conventionally employed workers. Market diversification increases a consumer’s options and allows for more dynamic competition.
Creation of Employment: Unemployment is a rampant problem in many societies. Entrepreneurship education aims at empowering people to create employment opportunities. The aim of this training is to enable these people to start the small and medium enterprises important in any country’s growth. This sector accounts for half the private workforce in India. Most people seeking employment depend on entrepreneurs to embark on new ventures and hire them.
Individual Competence: Entrepreneurship education imparts qualities such as self-motivation and financial responsibility. In addition, this education empowers people to have self-discipline since entrepreneurship involves taking well-calculated risks. People who have gone through this kind of training are able to recognize opportunities. Entrepreneurship education also encourages innovation in the running of organizations.
People Empowerment: Teaching people innovative ways to make a living enables them to take control of their circumstances. In Tanzania, for example, entrepreneurship education is being used as a tool to empower women. Technically trained women, for example, struggle to find employment in a male-dominated domain. The education is aimed at improving their self-confidence and giving them a chance at becoming self-reliant so that they are not totally dependent on employment. This form of education also builds up self-awareness. It provides a dynamic platform on which an individual can explore his strengths through practical application and not theoretical knowledge gained from basic education.
6. Problems Encountered and Resources Required:
Entrepreneurship support has its limits. It prepares students for future intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial careers and promotes the commercialization of research results. Close cooperation and integration of the College’s internal and external support infrastructure and services is an important success factor. Getting in private actors contributing to College entrepreneurship support as early as possible is crucial in exposing would-beentrepreneurs and support providers to the “world of business”.
Best Practice – 2
1. Title of the Best Practice:
Student Skill development training to prepare students for industry-ready
2. Objectives:
The main objective of the Skill Development Training program is to ensure that our graduates have employable skills and can contribute to the development of the nation. Over the period of 4 years, we train our students based on the requirement of the global market. Some of the objectives are listed below:
- Providing opportunities for life-long learning for skill development.
- Ensuring quality and relevance of training.
- Preparing the youth of India as a manpower resource for World Markets.
- Diversifying Skills development programmes to meet the changing requirements, particularly of the emerging knowledge economy.
- Preparing the youth of India as a manpower resource for World Markets.
- Building true marketplace competencies rather than mere qualifications.
Having listed the above objectives, we have ensured that our students acquire the required amount of theoretical and practical knowledge in the classrooms and labs. This helps them to understand the existing knowledge in the field and the kind of innovations.
3. The context:
Our country presently faces a dual challenge of the dearth of a highly trained workforce as well as the non-employability of large sections of traditionally educated youth who acquire little or no job skills. The challenge pertains not only to a huge quantitative expansion of facilities of skill training but also to the equally important tasks of raising their quality.
a) The Collaboration between Industry and Institutes: Involvement of Industry and employers in the Skill Training structures is almost nothing. They could not be brought forward to proactively participate in the field of curriculum development, and training of instructors for skill development because this would entail larger autonomy to institutions.
b) Disparity in the kinds of jobs and youths’ aspirations: In the present scenario, it is very difficult to find students to fill the classrooms and get them to accept new kinds of jobs. There is a huge gap between their aspirations and available jobs.
c) Lack of Interest in vocational training among the students: A large number of students with vocational education need to look for placement in private organizations or for self-employment. The condition of private industrial employment and self-employment are inferior in India in comparison to other countries.
4. The Practice:
The Institute has established a separate department Skill Development Centre that focuses on industry-related training. The institute hires skilled trainers who have lots of experience and are highly qualified. The department consists of various trainers specialized in various fields and it is related to the requirements of the job market. The department was established so that our students would not face any problems in the interview and clear all the rounds without any difficulty. Keeping that in mind we have hired trainers for Aptitude knowledge, Quantitative theory, Soft Skills, and Technical Skills.
These trainers offer courses for the 2nd and 3rd-year students for the semester and the syllabus is designed based on the requirements of the job markets. Apart from the regular classes, we also provide industry-related training for 15 days or week based on the student’s requirements.
5. Evidence of success:
The placement rate of the institute is increasing every year. The fact that the majority of our graduates are getting jobs in the various companies itself shows the success of the department. Most of our students before they graduate, get job offers from the companies like Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services, Amazon, Salesforce, Wipro, and several others.
a) Offer from companies before graduation: Most of our students get their job offers before they graduate. The specific training is offered in the third year so that it becomes easy for them to clear the interview.
b) Company internship in the fourth year: There are several students who opt for the internship, however, the students don’t have a clear idea of how to get the internship and the various assessment process. Hence, the department helps them to go through the process and help them to clear the interview.
c) MS or M.Tech Scholarships: Some of our graduates prefer going for higher studies in foreign universities, however, they cannot afford to go without a scholarship. Hence they need to appear for various tests like GRE, TOFEL, PTE, IELTS, TOFEL, etc, the trainers help them to successfully clear the test through personal guidance.
6. Problems encountered and Resources required:
The Skill Development Training program is the recent approach of the institute and it’s not popular among the students. At the same time, they are not aware of the functions and the objectives of the course, hence the the message needs to be disseminated through different platforms and inform existing departments. The institute needs to hire skilled people who can find the middle ground between classroom teaching and vocation learning. The proper collaboration of the industry and institute is very much important for the successful functioning of the department.
a) Quality and relevance: Quality and relevance of skill development are key to India’s global competitiveness as well as improving an individual’s access to decent employment. For enterprises to compete in the global economy, the quality of training must reach internationally comparable standards and be relevant to the needs of national and international markets.
b) Shortage of Trainers: There is an urgent need for improving the quality and size of trainer resources. Skill up-gradation of trainers, their quality assurance, and improvement of their status in society are important to improve the quality of training.