We provide students with opportunity to study and work with international students, says Admissions Director

Competing with all the difficult times, Sage University has always proven its worth by imparting quality education to its students. The University has always focused on giving students a bright career by bringing high paid and challenging job opportunities to the students. In a conversation with Shiksha.com, Director-Counselling and Admission at SAGE University, Indore Dr Sanjeev Singhal talks in detail about University’s practices to ensure the incremental growth of students in future. He has also set up the expectation from the aspiring candidates and the mantra to succeed in the curriculum.

Read the excerpts of the interview below:

Q: What are the three things that your University is doing that will enable it to differentiate itself from the competition?

A: At SAGE University Indore (SUI), we have state of the art infrastructure of the labs such as Apple lab, Android Lab, Red Hat Lab, Huawei Technologies lab of Cloud Computing & IoT, Amazon AWS lab for Data Science, Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence. These labs help our students to get hands-on experience with the latest computing technologies.

We provide our students with the opportunity to study and work with international students and faculty members of various universities at different locations such as the USA, Taiwan and the UK through online and offline mode for research and development. We have collaborated with international universities to provide opportunities for students to participate in summer schools such as at Tennessee Tech University (TTU) in the USA, National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) in Taiwan and Brunel University in London through online and offline mode.

At SAGE University, project-based learning or skill-based learning is major education policy. Our degree programmes are designed to focus more on the practical side of a course rather than only theoretical studies. Theoretical classes are accompanied by longer practical sessions to understand the practical use of technology in day to day life. Our curriculum requires the students to prepare a project related to the relevant topics of the subject, under the guidance of faculty so that students may understand the course concepts easily by actually working on them practically. Students industrial training centres such as Waste to wealth centre, Vermicomposting training and commercial production centre, Biogas production and equipment building training centre, Ethanol fermentation and standardization centre and Molecular docking training provides hands-on training to SUI students. At Design and Journalism, 90 per cent of our courses and subjects are studio-based which ensures students get hand-on knowledge of making products and films. The theory is taught only to support skill development and the ability to create new products.

Q: What are the top three initiatives are undertaken by you that are helping your students become more industry ready?

A: All the courses are designed by top education leaders along with industry experts from India as well as abroad and major focus was given to prepare students with hands-on experience with current technologies so that they are industry-ready as soon as they graduate from the degree. The demands of our courses are very high in the job market and the total number of jobs is more than the available experts.

All the courses at SUI have collaborated with industries. These include multinational companies such as Huawei, Microfocus, Amazon AWS Educate, Apple, HP & Red Hat Technologies. We provide certifications from all of these industries which help the students in making a strong academic background based on industry exposure which ultimately helps them in getting a good placement.

At SUI we are focused on skill-based learning i.e. focus is more on project-based learning with the help of state of the art infrastructure of the labs. We provide students hands-on experience of the latest computing technologies and Science labs that MNCs are actually using for their projects to make our student's industry-ready as soon as they finish their degree. For every course and subject, students visit commercial sites, industries and actual workplaces where they are exposed to how theory is practiced.

Q: What are the key attributes that a student should have in order to qualify for your institution and get top grades in your institution?

 A: To qualify for admission at SIU, the applicant must fulfil the eligibility criteria. Alongside, they should be interested in learning advance topics such as Artificial intelligence, Cyber Security, Data Science, Cloud computing, Business Analytics, Agro entrepreneurship and Tissue Culture.

To perform well in the curriculum, the student must have the desire for project-based learning, innovative in approach, interested in doing more practical work and sincerity in attending all the classes and labs. In parallel, they must keep themselves aware of the latest happening in the world, must have the curiosity to learn, experiment, explore and perform. Also, they must have good mental and physical health to work with energy and passion.

Q: Which programmes would you say are your best? What is it that helps your institution differentiate these programmes?

A: All our programmes are the best in their class. At the Institute of Advanced Computing, we offer degrees in the advanced specialised streams of computer science, information and communication technology. We offer BTech, MTech and PhD degrees in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Cyber Security and Forensics, and CSE. Generally, after doing BTech in traditional computer science engineering, one has to go for an advanced degree or diploma in order to learn in detail about the advanced topics that we offer at Advance Computing. Our goal is to create engineers and professionals who are ready to work in these modern engineering fields as soon as they complete their degrees from SAGE University. Programme such as BBA and MBA Business Analytics is the need of the hour. With so much data being generated all around the world, Analytics and Data Science are going to be the key for all businesses to flourish. Experts in this field will be and are required by all.

Q: What are you doing to improve/drive better campus placements for your current students and alumni? What kind of jobs routinely come to campus? What would you say are the key recruitment trends for your institution?

A: At SUI, we have formulated a Corporate Relationship Cell which is working for the university. The student coordinators of this Cell work hand in hand with the officers of Cell to attract excellent campus opportunities for the students. This being one part the other part is in-house training opportunities provided to the students to make them interview perfect. Our students always have more than one opportunity to choose from where the campus is concerned.

The average package offered by the industries in the modern fields of data science, AI, Cybersecurity and Cloud computing is Rs 6-8 lakh per annum (LPA) for just pass out engineers and with five years’ experience in the above fields, the average salary is increased to Rs 10-15 LPA. For other graduation programmes, the average package is Rs 3-4 LPA and the highest package offered at SUI is Rs 12.5 LPA in 2019-20. SAGE University placement cell is actively involved with the institutes and we have collaborations with multinationals such as Quick heal, Micro focus, Huawei, Amazon, Apple, HP, Red Hat, and many more. Affiliation with RICON Enterprises Private Limited, Ficus Biotech, Turkey, Noori Foundation and ACCA UK ensure our student's best training and placement.  In the coming years, we hope to be the leaders of advance education in India, providing skill-based smart education with 100 per cent placement assistance to the students after completing their degree.