AICTE Chairman calls for integration of skill education with higher education

AICTE Chairman has sought cooperation from all stakeholders to promote and spread skills to Indian Youth

The Chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Professor T. G. Sitharam has called upon all stakeholders associated with skill development to come together to make India and its education system fully skill-oriented.

Sitharam while inaugurating the Industry 4.0 India Conference (I4IC 2023) organized by Employability.life said that one of the AICTE's primary goal is to eliminate language barriers and provide technical education to students in their native languages.

He said: “For same AICTE has recently launched AICTE internship portal to provide internship to rural youth. So far more than 2.7 crore registration have been received, 85 colleges enrolled and 75000 companies have shown interest to hire interns through this portals.”

He also informed that promoting online education, AICTE’s Ekumbh platform has received 1.5 lakhs download across 47 countries. This call would ultimately result into imparting skills to youth of the country to enable them to land at the job of their choice and contribute to the growth of the country.

AICTE Chairman also emphasized that integration of primary and secondary education with higher education is required in order to make India’s skills initiatives fully comprehensive.

Given the high importance of skills to the economy and society, all partners in skill-rated activities should join hands with the Government and the Skill Development Ministry to ensure that the goals are met, said Professor Sitharam. He also noted that the new National Education Policy stipulates that vocational education must be imparted even below the twelfth standard, the objective being that young people acquire skills for earning a living.

Professor Sitharam also declared that efforts are under way by multiple institutions to ensure that skills are learnt by students in all districts for which online courses are available and necessary facilities are present. He added that with the help of the adoption of various technologies, the Government and different institutions are pushing the agenda of skilling through collaboration and cross-cultured pathways so that skilling and initiatives associated with it reach the intended beneficiaries. Partnership between industry and academia is also essential to make skills pervasive and to meet the demand of industry, he told the conference.

Dr Manish Malhotra, Co-Founder & Chairman of Employability.life added that the institutional response relating to education in general, and skills in particular, will be critical for India to achieve its target to make India a five trillion economy in the next few years.”

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