Minister urges industries, entrepreneurs to give priority to students from Tamil Nadu

He made this request while addressing the education conclave organised by the Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu. 

The Minister recalled the record of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in opening as many as 67 State-run colleges and cited the Union Human  Rights Development Ministries statistics for the year 2015 – 2016 to substantiate his claim. 

According to the Minister, the national average for the gross enrolment ratio was 25.5 per cent whereas it was 44.3 per cent during the tenure of Jayalalithaa. 

“The national average for colleges stood at 27 colleges per lakh of students whereas the ratio in TN was 37 colleges per lakh of students,” Anbalagan pointed out. He advised students to go for self-employment and provide jobs to several youth in the state, as only a few become entrepreneurs after finishing their collegiate education. 

Toeing the Minister’s line, AICTE chairman Anil D Sahasrabudhe observed that the Higher Education industry was not doing the innovations the way it should. Terming team-building as essential component for employability, Sahsrabudhe pointed out the employability from higher education was only 40 per cent. He suggested that the B Tech projects should be made inter-disciplinary for inculcating the values of team work. 

He also observed that adjunct faculty and industry interaction in the education institutions would help improve the employability factor among students.  

“The industry should also help institutions to improve the employability factor by making the laboratory facilities to industrial standards, and it will be mutually beneficial”, he said. 

He thanked the Minister for allotting land for building the regional office for AICTE which is at present housed in Shastri Bhavan. He also thanked Higher Education Secretary Sunil Paliwal for not scuttling it, in a lighter vein. “The sanction for the land whose value will run into several crores of rupees was immediately obtained by the Minister from the Chief Minister soon after I took the file to him,” he said.