Training slots for students
Perfect matching of training slots in industries and students’ requirements - a win-win situation for both

By R. K. Handu
Given its land area and resources, India supports proportionately much larger share of world population. But this demographic situation can be exploited to its advantage through education and training of its people. That’s really the way for India to occupy the central place in global affairs. It is perhaps in this context that Kapil Sibal, HRD Minister foresees a revolution in education sector larger than the one in telecom sector. But there are critics who are sceptical with too much happening too soon. The concern of the critics is also not without a basis. The fundamental cause for worry is that whereas there has been significant development in quantitative terms in education sector, qualitatively upscaling has not kept up the desired pace.

Around 1995 the Government of India and the State Governments realised that the percentage of technical manpower in developed countries was about 16% whereas it was only about 1.6% in India. This led to a large-scale opening of degree engineering colleges in all states of India.

Administration and management of engineering colleges involves multifarious activities, each one of which has its own importance and influence on overall successful functioning of the institutes. One such area, which has been greatly emphasised but not found the desired level of achievement is the training of students in industrial environment during the period of college education. The objective of inclusion of this part in the curriculum is quite obvious - to expose students to real life environment so as to facilitate smooth transition from classroom to place of work.

Problem of Numbers
Unfortunately many stories (right or wrong) make the rounds in academic circles regarding what actually happens on the ground. Having been at work in training and placement department for long, I have often been pondering over the possible ways and means to improve the ground realities especially through as perfect matching as possible between training slots available in industries on the one hand and the capabilities, past record and requirements of students, on the other. There are two possible models which I have been able to conceive. Before I briefly put down the concepts of these models, I wish to list down some of problems I have noted when it comes to deploying students (in large number at the same time) for training in industrial units.

As per university norms, the students of engineering colleges are required to undergo industrial training. For example, in colleges affiliated to universities in Haryana the time duration for training is 6-8 weeks each after completing second and third years of 4-year B.Tech courses. The Training and Placement Officers and their students face difficulties in finding appropriate industries for getting the industrial training slots fixed. The first and foremost hurdle is that companies are reluctant to assign training slots due the various reasons, which include, but not limited to the following:

• During a certain given period there is a sudden rush for training of students. Many supervisors are needed to be deployed to impart training to students and these supervisors shall be idle later on for rest of the year.
  
• Security reasons demand that bona fide and
  eligible students only are allowed entry to avoid accidents leading to loss of life, property and
  productivity.
  
• Industrial units often lack commitment to training because institutions do not share any revenue with them, in spite of the fact that training carries significant weightage in B.Tech grading, although trend, of late, seems to be changing somewhat in some cases.
  
• The desired level of coordination between institutions and industrial units is often missing.
  
• There is no regulatory authority in place for arranging training for all students. The whole affair works more at personal level through
  individuals’ contacts.
  
• Industry, even in Government and Public Sector do not have any clear policy about the number of engineering or non technical students to be trained by them and as such there is no systematic data available on their training capacity or potential for undergraduate engineering students, which necessitates collection of primary data from them.

There are two types of organisations to be found in existence, which offer training facilities and opportunities. Firstly, those which are mainly involved in selling training (at a price) on hard or soft skills to graduates, undergraduates or working employees on the basis of market needs.

Secondly, those which provide training as a good will gesture to society with the sole aim of human resource development. These organisations do not charge any fee although they assign priority to the wards of their own employees. No doubt many organisations are eager to have students from premier institutions to take training with them so as to get some insights about their own flaws and weaknesses by collecting innovative observations and suggestions from these students.

An effort can be made to suggest improvement of the above scenario by two models briefly described below.

General Counselling Model
This is rather simple and conventional but needs to be put in place in a systematic way. What is intended is to hold counselling sessions for allotment of training slots in industries the way it is done while admission of students in the beginning of every session. There should be a central or nodal designated agency which should be responsible for this function. The agency will have the data base about availability of training places in different organisations.

The data base will be collected round the year through surveys, visits, interaction with willing and potential industrial organisations. Moreover availability of infrastructure (physical, manpower, financial) in any organisations will form the basis of determining the kind and number of training places on offer for the students to take. This exercise may include both kinds of training places - those offered on payment of fee and those offered free. To match all these seats with students needing training, a ‘students’ merit list’ may be prepared. This list may be same or similar to AIEEE rank or some other mutually acceptable criteria may be followed and moreover the same can be refined as the designated agency gains experience. The allocation of training places can be concluded in one or, if necessary, in two counselling sessions lasting say two to four days. Although there may appear nothing special about this model, yet it can yield several advantages as it will work on collective basis, provide wider choice to students and will cause better matching between individual’s needs and available training seats. When there can be joint counselling sessions for admission and joint campus placement of passing out students, why should joint industrial training counselling not be held? It needs to be given a chance and good results will follow.

Assignment Model
This model, rather sophisticated, intends to be technology driven. The training in industry can be provided according to the priorities and the convenience of the students and the industry both. An industry may identify and display various unique slots (“alpha numeric”).

A system for developing cost matrix could be decided according to one or many parameters like:

• Distance of student’s residence from training site
  
• Percentage of marks obtained in a particular subject
  
• Percentage of marks in a particular examination e.g. in AIEEE
  
• Age, sex, weight or height.
  
• Past training or if coming after second or third year etc

The computer software (to be suitably developed) may evaluate every student, identified by unique roll number and evaluate his or her merit for each unique slot for which he has shown the priority.

A cost model has to be developed which would translate the requirements of both the students and training providers and match the same to minimise total cost, or dissatisfaction.

It shall now be the endeavour of the software developers to solve this problem as a transportation problem (or as an Assignment problem if compatible). In short the objective of the model is to ensure appropriate allocation of training seat to every student, overall cost reduction, adequate care both of the
students and the participating industrial units.

— R.K. Handu is Training and Placement Officer, N. C. College of Engineering,
Israna, Panipat (Haryana)

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