ARTICLE

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Higher Education in India has seen massive growth in recent years. India’s engineering education is at par or better than those of the developed countries when a small subset of colleges is considered. On one hand, this growth promises to produce more skilled individuals to fulfill needs of ever growing Indian economy and on the other hand it poses a huge challenge for the governing bodies like UGC, AICTE and others to maintain or improve the quality of education.

According to Nasscom, the revenues from Indian software and IT industry are expected to top $50 billion in FY09-10. A key factor fueling the growth is the Indian IT industry moving into the next wave of off-shoring owing to globalization of white collar work. This trend is evident in all large IT companies, hardware, chip design and R&D houses having a large presence in India working on the consulting, next-generation product development and design. In many cases the Indian centers are the largest next only to their key R&D centers in the US or Europe. Over 900 captives in India accounts for $10.6 billion, out of which 650+ are engineering design. Engineering design services and product development is clocking $10 billion.

With the market fast paced growth, fuelled by market need, we see a wide gap in the supply of quality manpower to meet demand. Recent studies from Hewitt have shown that less than 10 percent (around 65,000) of the graduate and post graduate pool of 650,000 are eligible to undertake R&D related assignments. The key reason for this being, colleges emphasize very heavily on finding a job as opposed to learning. Tracking placement record of a college seems to be a key metric that gets tracked minutely. The reasons for the gap are plentiful – graduates lacking hands on practical knowledge due to greater emphasis on theoretical learning, low academic research focus and patent filings in our colleges, absent of yearly scorecard on the Universities to access the performance of Universities on an overall basis and course basis which leads to sharp decline in quality, clear disconnect between what the industry wants and the curriculum, lack of finishing school for engineering graduates, best practices from one university currently is not replicated in the others, no common ground for professors to meet and exchange their views and ideas, companies not having a robust “campus connect” program, companies trying to back-fill existing roles with fresh graduates (especially in areas Electronic Design Automation and Design), and a lack of common body to govern faculty and to share best practices.

With the gap widening and demand rising simultaneously, the need of the hour is to enable the graduates to be more employable along with Promoting and supporting the creative mind is very important.. A feasible solution to reduce this gap is to get industry, academicians and students onto the same platform.

Chowki (www.chowki.info) a brainchild of Sparsha was launched in February 2010, is a non-profit platform to bridge the gap between the industry, academia and student community. It enables close industry involvement in education and help in planning ahead to meet the growing and dynamic demands of the industry. Chowki is fully funded and supported by Sparsha Learning Technologies. Sparsha is incubated in STEP, IIT Kharagpur and has an extended research center in PESIT CORI, Bengaluru.

Chowki helps bridge the gap by bringing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from the global industry closer to the academia by providing 'Entrepreneurship Education' which helps train students for successful careers in the rapidly advancing technological world. It hopes to be a catalyst for educational institutes to have a close industry involvement though applied research and industry sponsored internship. High Focus on both on employability and innovation

Chowki looks to have about fifty members comprising of SMEs and academia. Chowki aims to focus on management studies, electronics, computer science & related disciplines. The different activities in the platform include – authoring text books, creation of course material coupled with lectures and lab work, and to teach management concepts to undergraduate and graduate management students through case studies for better connect from theoretical to apply in real life business situations. Chowki is currently open to collaborate with individuals and other similar initiatives which will enable to enahance the above connect.

Some of the activities which are currently underway are:

Actively participating in guest lectures and guest lecturing and supporting seminars across different colleges in Bengaluru. In parallel we are supporting various seminars and conferences organised by universities and colleges, like the recently concluded FPGA for signal processing and embedded applications in MS Ramaiah School Of Advanced Studies.

Shortly we will be offering basic electronics, Analog Electronic Circuits and Digital Logic classes to various colleges across Karnataka.

Chowki has started an initiative where it has signed an MoU with a reputed educational institute to expand the access of reference materials to the students by collecting technical and management books from members and their community. All donors will have access to the library, which means the world of information available at your fingertips!

On the management studies, we are putting together collating case studies. This approach will help the students immensely to connect theory to real life situations

As Chowki is a nonprofit entity, the revenue generated due to various activities is channeled back to boost the platform. Revenue is used to strengthen channel partnership, fund scholarships & rewards, sponsor various events and support labs in institutions. Chowki is built on a strong governance board model, with office bearers rotated on an annual basis, to ensure fresh ideas can be fostered leading to the “greater good”. Chowki ensures transparency and makes sure that its members do not have any conflict of interest with their current employers. Chowki also manages the program activities such as lead generation, program logistic management, end to end solution in content development and delivery.

To know more about how you can become a member or know more about Chowki, please get in touch with Mr. Shivananda (Shivoo) Koteshwar at shivoo@chowki.info, or visit our website at www.chowki.info