CII Industry Readiness Programmes

Taking a step in the direction of making graduates employable by enhancing their industry readiness, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has launched an ambitious programme which aims at scaling of upskilling interventions in higher education institutions. The programme will make use of technology and also bring industry experts to provide mentoring and guidance to students.

An urgent requirement of educational institutions from industry today is internships for students since the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has made four-six months of internship mandatory for students. With the number of students enrolled in higher education in India being 30 million and with engineering students alone being approximately 0.8 million who take admissions every year, mandatory internship means roughly 4 lakh students in engineering alone needing meaningful engagement with industry on an annual basis. But there are not more than 2.5 lakh registered manufacturing companies in India. Eighty-five per cent of them, as per Asian Development Bank estimates, are very small sized with less than 50 workers. Effective number of decent sized companies which are in the manufacturing sector and which can provide some form of internships, is only about 35,000.

Given this lop-sided scenario and the criticality of ensuring that students find adequate options to hone their skills for corporate world, CII has launched two soft internship programmes called CII Smart Manager Certificate Programme and CII Campus to Corporate Programme. Both programmes make use of technology in a big way and have blended formats. The Campus to Corporate Programme is a six-month programme and includes visits to industry and face to face interactions with industry leaders every month. The Smart Manager Programme on the other hand is a four-month programme in purely digital mode. Both programmes will have CII certification on successful completion by students.

The CII Industry-Readiness Programme will also include a separate assessment of engineers to gauge their level of preparedness for a job in industry and will be called CII IPATE (Industrial Proficiency Aptitide Test for Engineers). This assessment and the way it will be administered across country was also explained at the summit.

While GATE exam is taken by those students who wish to pursue higher studies and take up jobs in public sector companies, CII IPATE is expected to become the benchmark for those who wish to join the private sector corporate world.