Campus Placement drives. The expectation, reality and the consequences. The necessary remedies.

The Private Sector Education system came into the picture since the mid 80s when we realized that the Government driven education system is not adequate enough to cope up with the increasing demands of education in our country. The entire idea was to have better education infrastructure and ensure quality learning by privatising the education system. But today the expectation level of the students and parents have completely changed. Instead of a better learning system, they have started treating the Private Universities and the Institutes as placement manufacturers or placement retail counters. The students and the parents show more curiosity about the placement drives in their very first visit to an education campus rather than focussing on other aspects like learning infrastructure and pedagogy. Well, they are not completely to be blamed. 

I personally feel that the game of showcasing education as a commodity and placement as a price tag was first shown and introduced by the top notch Institutes that also include the IIMs. With the increasing cost of education and inorder to justify the high course fees, this game is now followed by all Private Universities and the Institutes other than few exceptions. Let me tell you something. I have spoken to many IIM graduates and came to know about the existence of dark realities of placements even in IIMs. Combining all IIMs, a huge number of students remain unplaced or even if they are placed with an average profile and package, after few years they are unable to sustain and get involved with pointless ordinary jobs and career path. But end of the day, only the highest packages of the IIM graduates are highlighted and not the average or lowest placement packages. Even I have spoken to many IIM graduates and I came to know that the pedagogy of the IIMs is overhyped to a great extent and there is a huge gap between the right candidates and the right jobs. 

Just imagine that if someday all the IIMs and the IITs stop giving placements, I sincerely doubt that how many of the students would actually run behind them.

Now this is where the problem is. Following the path of these top notch institutes, the rest of the Private Institutes and the Universities have become a part of this rat race where inorder to justify the return on investment of a student, placement is actually made to be swallowed like a spoonful of tonic and the consequence is that most of the students are unable to sustain in the long run and soon they are back to square one. 

Now placement or learning system is just like the question of first egg or hen. I personally feel that this is where the Private Universities and the Institutes have a big role to play. 

1. Instead of running behind number of admissions, every Private Institutes and the Universities need to be more selective while admitting students keeping in mind that only good raw materials can be converted into quality finished products. 

2. A clear demographic and psychographic analysis of every students have to be done in the very initial stage. The interviewers while selecting the students for admission need to identify the basic skill areas and internal traits of every students.

3. The admission and the placement team need to work as compliments to each other. Let the admission team handover the case history of skill areas of every students to the placement team.

4. Let the placement team start interacting with the students right from day one and start working on polishing every student's skill areas. The placement team need to do a SWOT analysis of every student and start working on those areas from the very first year.

5. Every faculty before entering inside the classroom should be aware about the strength and weakness of the students sitting inside the classroom so that he or she can finetune his or her delivery inside the classroom accordingly. 

6. Let the Institute or the University work on the KPI ( Key performance indicators ) of every student. 

7. It is the responsibility of the placement team to keep a track on the progress of every student as they have the initial case history of the students. If required, the placement team has to find innovative mechanism for imparting quality education to match with the industry requirements. The placement team must have a clear understanding of what is required by the industry and what accordingly has to be included in the curriculum.

8. Apart from networking with the existing companies, the placement team must emphasize on building new networks of Corporate HR.

9. The placement team must avoid the process of bulk placement and rather focuss on placing the right candidate for the right job. It is always better to make only the eligible candidates sit for the interview process. Not much focus has to be given on attended versus recruited numbers. Instead, a recruited candidate should be given a one month mandatory preplacement training so that he or she can sustain in that company in the long run. 

10. Skill based tailor made placement oriented curriculums have to be introduced for the students of every program inorder to bridge down the gap between skill sets and actual industry requirements. 

I don't blame the students and the parents who are actually facing the burden of the high cost of today's education system. But I blame those education opinion leaders who are injecting the antidotes of return on investment theory to the students and parents and converting education sector into a fish market.

I suggest the Private Universities and the Institutes to come out with innovative education system and placement process to meet these expectations of the parents.

I myself is working in Karnavati University, Gandhinagar, Gujarat where we follow an innovative education process and a smooth three tier placement facilities at Regional, Zonal and National level with the support of regular soft skill development and preplacement training process arranged for the students. Our admission process into different UG and PG programs start with National level entrance conducted by us like KUAT and DAT followed by strict GD and PI process. This has helped us to get quality students and ensure decent placement records and improve on the overall placement process every year.

To know more in details, you can always feel free to contact me at 9831137124. On behalf of Karnavati University, we heartily welcome all of you to visit our campus and meet me for a cup of coffee and discuss more in details.

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