Bridging the qualification gap between academia and industry in India

The massive demand for complementary training of engineering graduates in India indicates a mismatch between academic education and industry requirements. This paper identifies the gap between academia and industry and presents an approach to bridge it using the concept of Learning Factories. The competencies of the newly graduate engineers and the competency requirements of Indian industry for graduates have been identified based on discussions with industry professionals and literature review. It has been found that the technical and social competency requirements match, but there is a gap regarding the methodological competency. This necessitates graduate engineer trainings at the start of employment. The additional trainings prove to be time consuming and costly for the industry. To bridge this gap a Learning Factory testbed has been implemented at a premier Indian university. It is expected that the proposed Learning Factory will make the Indian graduate engineers ready for the job at university level and the additional graduate engineer training redundant. The study also provides a roadmap of utilizing Learning Factories as an integral part for the Indian technical academic system. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.