Vismitha Kudva and I, jointly presented this paper in "
National Conference on Quality Enhancement in Higher
Education: Issues and Concerns" held at NSAM College, Nitte sponsored by NAAC. Please feel free to share your opinions.
Despite its vast network India has
failed to create a world-class higher education system. According to the
academic ranking of the world universities for 2005, India had just two
universities in the top 500, while Japan had thirty-four, China eighteen, South
Korea seven, and Brazil four. McKinsey estimates that only about 10 per cent of
the Indian students with degrees in arts and humanities and 25 per cent of
engineering graduates are globally competitive. Twelve per cent of the
country’s 41 million unemployed have either graduate or post-graduate degrees,
pointing to the serious failure of the country’s higher education system. Clearly,
outside a few islands of excellence, our higher education system has failed to
produce quality institutions that can nurture the creative, intellectual
leaders we require for sustainable growth.
“You can give lifetime
employability by training people, by making them adaptable, making them mobile
to go other places to do other things. But you can’t guarantee life time
employment.”—Jack Welch. In the new economy of rapid technological change and
increasing business complexity, organizations are striving for developing
quality human capital. Soft Skills can provide the path towards this goal. Soft
skills are very important to enhance employability. Soft skills need to be
enhanced in students to make them competent enough to meet the demands of the
current job market. There should be an integrated approach from all the
stakeholders such as faculty, students, educational institutions and the
industry to bring awareness about soft skills among the students and promote
the same for enhancing employability.
What are Soft
Skills?
Soft skills is a sociological term
relating to a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the
cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal
habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other
people. Soft skills complement hard skills (part of a person's IQ), which are
the occupational requirements of a job and many other activities. (Source:
Wikipedia2011). Soft skills are very essential at
every level of the organization. The soft skills can be listed as below:
- -
Communication Skills
- -
Self Management
- -
Goal Setting and Time
Management Skills
- -
Critical and Structured
thinking
- -
Interpersonal Skills
- -
Problem Solving and
Think Out of the Box Skills
- -
Teamwork
- -
Empathy, Ethics and
Etiquettes
- -
Cultural Sensitivity
- -
Conflict Management
- -
Project and Business
Management
- -
Integrity and Honesty
How
to acquire Soft Skills?
There are 2 methods of acquiring
the soft skills – one, through formal classroom training and secondly, self learning
through books and web based learning materials.
A pleasant way of acquiring soft
skills is frequent socializing with friends, relatives, colleagues and other
members of the society. Soft skill cannot be acquired by reading books. They
are acquired by experimenting them on self. The best way to improve your
communication skill is by communicating frequently. Remember? To improve the
handwriting teachers used to make us copy books for pages together daily.
Role
of Soft Skills in increasing employability:
In the midst of last decade, the
corporate giants observed that there have been several skills gaps in graduates
and demands of the industry. Many companies took proactive measures to make the
graduates industry ready and employable. The companies have realized the need
for industry-academia relationship to meet the demand for quality man power.
The question that raises here is if
the Soft Skills can enhance the employability of the graduates, then shouldn’t
that be a part of curriculum? If so why hasn’t that been a part of the
curriculum till now?
How
can Soft skills be the part of the curriculum?
- -
Facilitating concepts
and practice/methods of group dynamics
- -
Interactive
training/teaching concepts and methods/techniques
- -
Interdisciplinary
studies (Choice Base Credit System)
- -
Leadership Roles
- -
Knowledge Sharing and
Management
- -
Team Building
Activities
- -
Team Skills – Team
Building, Team Management
- -
Negotiation and
Conflict Management
- -
Interpersonal and
Communication Skills
How
can this curriculum be modulated?
- -
Formal lectures
covering the theoretical aspects with live examples to facilitate the clarity
of the concept
- -
Adopting Games and
Exercises
- -
Role Plays showing
adaptability of the Soft Skills in real life scenarios
- -
Group Discussions
- -
Audio and Video Aids to
substantiate the importance of soft skills in employment. For eg: Fish
Philosophy Video clips.
- -
Exercises given as home
assignment.
- -
Adopting the Pre and
Post Assessment tool in the form of Questionnaire which can reveal the state of
mind prior to training and impact of the training.
There are 5 enemies of a healthy lifestyle which
have a direct impact on the employability of a person. They are:
1. Poor
Sense of Self
2. Anxiety
3. Embarrassment
4. Ignorance
5. Denial
Presence of any one of these factors in a person’s
mind can change the lifestyle of that person. These 5 factors do not
discriminate the person’s economic status, social status, educational
background, regional factor s or linguistic preferences. They are all pervasive
and they can enter any mind which welcomes them. These 5 enemies can impact the
employability of the candidates.
1. Poor Sense of Self:
A person does not know about self. One should discover the self/identity,
enhance the self worth and promote self confidence. There are live examples of
people who have done a great job and achieved milestones in professional life
in spite of being underperformers in their student life. The reason behind such
success stories are nothing but self identity, self confidence and ability to
sell self.
2. Anxiety:
An outcome poor sense of self. Self confidence is the only medicine for
anxiety. A little practice of facing new faces in the society can add value to
the fight against anxiety.
3. Embarrassment:
No person is perfect. Every person tries to be least imperfect. In this pursuit
mistakes do happen and embarrassments embrace. Treat them like cover pages of
biography.
4. Ignorance:
Ignorance is bliss but not always. One cannot escape from mistakes and
embarrassments in the backdrop of ignorance. Keep the doors open for knowledge.
Learn from mistakes. Do not deny the mistakes of self and do not accept the
mistakes of others.
5. Denial:
Learn the art of saying NO. A generic tendency is that when boss asks something
always say YES. But the fact is that the say YES only when you mean YES and
live up to it. Learn the art of denial. Be positive to be negative.
The Soft Skills play a vital role
when a person is almost done with his/her higher education. It is seen that
many a times Higher Education is done for the sake of doing it not with an aim
or a goal. There are 4 stages when a person is confused of his/her next stage
of life. First stage is end of Secondary Education, Second Stage is
Pre-University, Third stage is end of Graduation and lastly choosing the job.
First two stages are generally decided by the parents in India. When a person
is at the stage of completing the graduation the confusion arises – should
he/she find a job that can earn a 5-digit salary or go for higher studies. Many
a times, these decisions are made under peer pressure.
But, when the person is out of
higher education there’s no one who can influence his/her thought. Meanwhile,
the person is so confused to decide where to go. It is quite important that the
goal setting is done for the graduates whilst they enter the final year of the
graduation. It becomes quite important for the teachers to understand the
capability and interest of each student when they help them in goal setting.
Soft Skills that are innate in the student influence the way the goals are
being set.
The failures of Indian Universities
are highlighted at universal level not because of the curriculum they are
following but due to the lack of industry standards in the graduates coming out
of the universities.
Every educational institute has a
HRD cell with an intension to make the students employable. But, such cells
seem to be inactive and inefficient for various reasons.
- -
Inability to take time
out of the curriculum.
- -
Lack of interest among
the students.
- -
Any efforts of training
are considered to be an additional burden.
There have been several efforts in
enhancing the level of employability of the graduates by the Governments and
the companies. Infosys introduced Campus Connect in the 2007 for engineering
graduates and Project Genesis for the graduates in general studies in 2005. The
idea here was to train the students in last 6 months of their graduation and
have them employable by the end of the year. This would help the company have
industry ready resources.
Similarly, the Department of
Collegiate Education, Karnataka, introduced a scheme for the second year
students of Government First Grade Colleges to enable the students develop a
positive self image, communication and interpersonal skills, stress management
skills and social behavior.
Despite of these efforts if we are
lagging behind in producing quality man power, then we will have to go back to
elementary and secondary education system where we can mould the child into a
thinker and instill soft skills in it.
References:
Hagmann, J. and Almekinders, C.; (December 2003),
“Developing “Soft Skills” in Higher Education”; pp. 22.
Murthy, NRN. ; A Framework for Reforms in Higher
Education in India; Part IV : Education; A Better India: A Better World; pp.
135.
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