MHRD EQUIP Report Advises Vocational Content in Non-Technical Courses
A report that has been developed by one of the 10 groups of MHRD’s EQUIP vision plan has advised the government as well as the educational institutions in adding vocational content in all of the non-technical/professional programmes. This will help in increasing the employability of the students.
After the launch of Education Quality Upgradation and Inclusion Programme (EQUIP), which is the 5-year vision plan brought in by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, it has come up with a report stating that a huge gap has been built up between the skill requirement in the Indian Economy and the graduates coming out of the educational institutions in India. The report added that the courses in the Non-Technical and the Non-Professional streams require a minimum of 25-35% content that is focused on vocational training.
As per the report, introducing vocational content will allow to train and improve the employability of the students from these programmes. EQUIP had made 10 different groups that have or are in the process of surveying the different needs of Higher Education in India. As per the group that had been led Hasmukh Adhia, the Chancellor of Central University Gujarat pointed out that an extreme need for introducing vocational content in higher education, especially in the non-technical and the non-professional programmes was required. They added that the vocational content in these courses, i.e. B.Com, BA and B.Sc programmes, should be between 25% to 30% of the entire curriculum.
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The introduction of the vocational subjects in the programmes will improve the employability of the student. It also stated that the lack of the employability of the skills in these students results in the high number of unemployed graduates in the country. The report added that even though these courses make the student more aware citizens of India, it fails to inculcate the skills that are required by the Indian economy to be able to use the knowledge that has been gained by the students. It stated that the need to imbibe the skills that are required in the economy today has increased and will help in reducing the number of students who are unemployed after the completion of their higher education.
The report also stated that the curriculum of these courses needs to be restructured in order to introduce topics in vocational content. They added that the higher educational institutions will be able to do so with the help of Vocational Modules of MOOC or Massive Open Online Courses along with the help of local professionals or experts who can be employed on a contractual basis.