 Asish Tilak, a software programmer with Jindal Saw, says his job is an art that’s slowly fading out. He sees fewer students with the wherewithal for programming — the once-coveted MCA, or master of computer applications course — apply for interviews these days. The three-year degree course has been upstaged by short-term, job-oriented certifications in an uncertain economic climate. “Students these days opt for short-term certification programmes like .Net, Oracle or Cisco which provide good jobs,” he says.
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Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, achieved a hat-trick of sorts after making it to the Financial Times (FT) Global MBA ranking of the top 100 B-schools around the world for the third consecutive year. ISB has been the only Indian B-school on the list for the last three years.
The management institution has bettered its own erformance at the FT Rankings, and is now 12th on the list of top B-schools around the world. The ISB ranked 20th in 2008 and 15th in 2009. This year, ISB has beaten the likes of New York University: Stern, Yale School of Management, University of Oxford's Said Business School and University of Cambridge's Judge Business School. So what is ISB's secret to success? "There really is no secret to ISB's performance. It's just a spirit of excellence and the urge to improve ourselves at each level," said K Ramachandran, who is the Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth at ISB. He likened ISB to an entrepreneur who has the constant urge to improve his products and services and is not satisfied with one year's profit alone. "Two years ago, when we ranked 20th on the Financial Times list, the chairman called both staff and students for a meeting in which he told us not to get over-confident about the feat. He said this was only an indication that we were on the right track and not the end of the journey," said Ramachandran.
Not only does the Financial Times Ranking take into account the salary that B-school graduates receive, but it also tracks their career over a period of time. "This is a realistic ranking of a B-school's performance at the ground level," said Ramachandran.
So how come the Indian Institutes of Management, the country's most coveted B-schools, did not make it to FT's list? The two-year MBA course at the IIMs, which is their flagship programme, is not eligible for the FT rankings; the rankings are only for B-schools who take in students with work experience. While the ISB takes in students who have worked in industry before making it to the campus, this is not mandatory for IIM's flagship two year course. Many of the IIMs have started their own one-year Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGP-X), which is exclusively for students with work experience. In a few years, this course will also be eligible for the rankings, once there are enough batches for FT to chart the career growth of the alumni.
"We are getting very good applicants for the PGP-X batch, but this course needs to catch on amongst the student community as well as with industry. Unfortunately, the economic downturn occurred when the executive course was in its second year, both at IIM Ahmedabad as well as Calcutta.
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 THE Directorate of Technical Education has directed technical high schools run by the government to share resources with the government engineering and polytechnic colleges. The number of seats in engineering and polytechnic colleges was doubled in 2009-10, to check the outflow of students looking towards higher technical education.
The new directive is meant to fulfil the requirements of the increased number of students at the higher levels. For the same, the principals of government technical high schools have been directed to inform the principals of engineering and polytechnic colleges about the instruments, academic research and experimentation work at the schools for better cooperation and sharing of resources.
Each school has been allotted a college, which has to be kept in the loop.
Twenty-eight technical high schools across Gujarat have been directed through a Government Resolution (GR) for maximum utilisation of resource. The principals of the technical schools and colleges have been directed to hold meetings and chart ways for co-operation in resources.
A total of 17,000 seats across 23 engineering colleges have been increased taking the total number of seats to 35,000.
The increase to make enough seats available for all the science stream pass-outs who may have wanted to join an engineering course.
The GR sent to the technical high schools last month reads: “After 10 government engineering colleges and nine government polytechnic colleges were started last years, a huge number of seats were increased in engineering and polytechnic courses in the current academic year.”
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 Aditya Gupta says IT firms are big recruiters but there is an increasing preference for firms like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. “Our conversion rate — students who actually join — has been 93% at top B-Schools such as IIMs. Earlier, it used to be 63-70%,” said Infosys senior VP in HR Nandita Gurjar. At BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, 550 of the 900 students who will graduate this year have already been placed and offered salaries
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 With the placements season fast approaching, top B-schools across the country are to ensure they churn out as many entrepreneurs as possible. They are forming entrepreneurship cells/clubs, collaborating with associations, organising lectures and seminars, besides arranging for consulting projects with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and non governmental organisations (NGOs).
Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), for instance, has planned events to help students realise their “true calling”. The entrepreneurship cell at JBIMS has an online incubation center, which facilitates interaction between students with business ideas and industry stalwarts who can help students with development and implementation of ideas in to a business venture. Any student of JBIMS (past or present) can join the portal as mentee and professors or people from industry alumni can join as mentors to encourage innovative business products.
“This year onwards, we have implemented the placement holiday initiative wherein a student can take a break from the regular placement process and start their own venture. If by any chance they want to come back, they can come back in two years time and sit for the placement process. We also have a tie-up with National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and premier engineering colleges in Mumbai which will help students with the technical knowledge for their endeavours,” said a member of the E-cell.
Young Indian MBAs, according to a recent survey by an MBA portal, say they are keen on choosing entrepreneurship as a full-time career option this year. Over 200 students across 15 top Indian B-schools had participated in the survey.
Last year, the Indian School of Business (ISB) produced more number of entrepreneurs than ever with about 30 students submitting their ideas to the institute, of which about 50 per cent were shortlised for getting the required support from ISB for blossoming these into business ventures.
To encourage this trend, the Entrepreneurship Club at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), too, recently held its annual entrepreneurship summit ‘Dream Big India 2010’. The event aims at providing a platform to entrepreneurs to launch themselves, and to inspire the remaining bunch to dream big.
And, to mark its 25th year of existence, IIM Lucknow —which produced seven entrepreneurs last year — added a new chapter of entrepreneurial activity on campus with several new initiatives — one of them being Entrepreneurship @ Unitus. The event gives the students an opportunity to work with Unitus for a few months, part-time or full-time based on their interest. The institute’s laboratory on entrepreneurship motivation also had other events lined up like Nirvan, IIM-L’s annual entrepreneurship summit with various competitions and guest sessions to raise the entrepreneurship influence on campus.
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 Synopsys has announced the adoption of its comprehensive VLSI design curriculum in five regional centers in India. They are Visvesvaraya Technologics University (VTU) in the State of Karnataka, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) Hyderabad in the State of Andhra Pradesh, North East Technical Education Society (NETES) serving the State of Assam and eight other North East states, Bhubaneswar Institute of Technology (BIT) in the State of Orissa, and Chitkara University in the States of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, where a Masters program in microelectronics was announced earlier.
Seer Akademi is an educational content provider for Synopsys University Programs, and its methodology focuses on a unique combination of local and online faculty with skill-matrix-based learning.The curriculum offered in collaboration with Seer Akademi, the program features a computing environment, use of Synopsys software tools and IC design flow, and access to experienced faculty.
The curriculum will be used in classroom instruction, training and research to help advance the circuit design and fabrication knowledge of India's engineering graduates and working engineers. Courses will be conducted via interactive online webinars, social networking media and live sessions with academic and industry experts.
Synopsys says, new programs in embedded systems, alternate energy, electronics entrepreneurship and smart grid technology will also be created. Courses are planned to be available starting fall 2010.
The curriculum is part of the Synopsys Worldwide University Program, and developed by the Synopsys Armenia Education Department (SAED). This educational model of university-industry cooperation was successfully implemented in Armenia, Russia and China before being adopted by universities in India. Working with Seer Akademi, SAED will also provide the regional centers of excellence with the industry experts and academic faculty to supervise Master theses and PhD dissertations.
"Working with these regional centers of excellence is a key foundational step in enabling the developing Indian semiconductor industry by providing a skilled work force. Together, we intend to become an important source of this key resource," said Rich Goldman, vice president of corporate marketing and strategic alliances at Synopsys.
"With the growth of the electronics in India, we need to establish new ways to create a workforce skilled in using the latest advanced technologies or we may not be able to keep up with the opportunities that come our way," said Prof. Srikanth Jadcherla, chairman and CEO of Seer Akademi. "This initiative is powerful because it combines advanced education and research to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region. This ecosystem can play an important role in fostering the technology talent India will need. Synopsys has been successful in establishing practices to help develop a highly qualified workforce in several other countries. We want to bring this success to the Indian students."
"We see areas such as solar, wind and smart grids shaping the Indian landscape in the coming years," said Prof. Lalkishore, rector of JNTU Hyderabad. "We have hence initiated this collaboration with Synopsys and Seer Akademi to make this happen. Our graduates are sought the world over due to various such programs undertaken by JNTU Hyderabad."
"In the northeastern region of India, except for Assam, there was hardly any facility for technical education and advanced research until about five years back. Besides the governments, now the private engineering colleges are coming up with a mission and vision to initiate serious research and training facilities. NITS Mirza, under North East Technical Education Society is one such establishment that has forged ahead with generous support from Synopsys and Seer Akademi for training the engineering students for better employability," said Dr. A. K. Gogoi, president of NETES. "We have severe problems of communication in the region, coupled with getting qualified technical personnel. In this regard, Seer Akademi has helped us bridge the gaps, with Synopsys bringing us close to the international standards of training and research."
For more details visit www.seerakademi.com
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