The Hindu Business Line : Experts call for reworking of engg syllabus for soft skills in AP

ACADEMICIANS and IT industry representatives favoured a concerted effort to rework not only the syllabus for various engineering faculties in the State engineering colleges, but also concurrently develop communication and soft skills, which are often found lacking in a potential job aspirant.

It all started with a recent meeting organised by the Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University, where CEOs of various IT companies, academicians had converged to take stock of current day education requirements in engineering colleges and to make them more relevant to the industry. However, several industry representatives expressed concerns about the lack of communication and soft skills, which differentiate one candidate from another.

The Convener of EdCET, Osmania University, Prof V.B.Sharma, and Prof T.A. Janardhan Reddy, Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Osmania University, representing the academics expressed the view that the current day teaching needs to be fine-tuned to meet the industry requirements.

Even some of the best engineering graduates have problem of communication and are often found wanting in soft skills, thereby messing up their chances to land a job.

Since the industry head-hunters prefer people with better communication skills, they favoured incorporating soft skills training in the main academic syllabus of the engineering colleges. They said that problem is not that of the students but of the system itself.

Most of the engineering grads are focussed on either higher education abroad or preparing for higher examinations and therefore, tend to neglect communication skills.

At an interactive session organised by Central— The Book Shop, by consultant Mr Kiron Krishnamurthy, speakers sought to make out a case for not just reworking the syllabus of the engineering colleges, but also charting out new approach of communication and soft skills and favoured a separate language and communication laboratory in each of these engineering colleges.

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