Bridging the Industry- Academia skill gap A conceptual investigation with special emphasis on the management education in India

Abstract

India is a growing economy and has the attention of world players for investment and expansions. Due to this arises a need for ready-for-the-job people .But contrary to this, there is a large set of employees who need to be skilled, re-skilled and up-skilled to meet the needs of the changing environment. This is only possible through the active role of industry in sharing the know-how and expertise and academia in developing programmes and solutions to fill the void. India has stock of some 22 million graduates, including 6 million science graduates, 1.2 million with engineering degrees and 600,000 doctors, according to the data compiled by The Economic Times Intelligence Group, the NASSCOM and other industry sources. With this present scenario in mind, this paper is an effort to highlight a number of current and future initiatives aimed at gearing up and accelerating interdependence between academic and industrial prospects in India by laying special emphasis on research and development initiatives, governance of Indian management schools, building centres of excellence and attractive packages to allure competent faculty.