06 December 2019

IIIC transforms Graduates into Employees

Kozhikode: Every year, thousands of engineering graduates pass out of college, but only a handful of them are trained to be job ready. Over 80 per cent of them are not employable for any job in the knowledge economy, stated a report by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds. At the root of the problem is mushrooming of low-quality engineering colleges over the years. However, Nissari George, Jishnu S Shankar, Devadathan M, Farzana V A, Devisri M S, Jishnupriya and Sreerag C Sreenivasan have a different story to share. A PG Diploma in Urban Planning, Design, and Architecture(UPDA) and Advanced Construction Management (ACM) from the Indian Institute of Infrastructure and Construction (IIIC), Chavara, Kollam have changed their career and erased the blot ‘unemployable engineers’. All of them are now employed at UL Technology Solutions. “IIIC is trying to reduce the skill gap through appropriate industry interface and internship programmes. After completing the programme, the student will be competent to do the appropriate works in tune with the technology. Moreover, ULCCS is trying to improve not only the technical skills but also the soft skills including communication and English proficiency,” says UL Education director Dr. T.P Sethumadhavan. IIIC was established by Kerala Academy for Skills Excellence (KASE), under the Department of Labour, Government of Kerala and Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS) is the skilling partner for offering Skill development programmes here. A chit chat with these young techies, who are now the associate engineers in UL Technology Solutions, a subsidiary of ULCCS, opens the door of incredible academic proficiency and far-fetched practical knowledge gained from IIIC in the field. Jishnu: “In Engineering Colleges, the subjects are taught in a very theoretical manner. Majority of the faculty doesn’t talk about the application of concepts in the industry and the rest of the engineers attend any industry talk but in IIIC from the brainstorming of the project, contracts management, feasibility studies, DPR preparation to closure everything had to be documented by students”. Sreerag: “The syllabus made for each course is purely application-oriented and exactly what the industry demands. This has helped each of us to work in this organisation affluently.” Farzana: “Even the faculties had a very vast knowledge about industrial applications and theory sides. Also, external talks were too helpful during internship”. Nissari: “In IIIC, not only labs, everything is practical oriented. Other than internship which was for 30 days in the first sem, the final project was a live one with KIIFB which gave a complete infrastructure engineer exposure. For the Urban Planning course, two projects had to be done by students”. Devisri: “The infrastructure provided is also of high quality mentioned ‘state-of-the-art skill institute’ which is normally not found in engineering colleges.” View the original article at http://ultimes.ults.in/iiic-transforms-graduates-into-employees/