The challenge of the present times is “employability” and to make students employable, said the head of a hotel management institute and a chain of hotels.
Suborno Bose, the CEO of the International Institute of Hotel Management and Indismart Group Worldwide, spoke on “Study in Bengal” at Anandabazar Patrika & The Telegraph present Education Symposium at a city hotel.
“One of the things I feel is a challenge is employability. You have to make people
employable and to make people employable you need to give them the skill, knowledge, and the attitude...,” said Bose.
Bose, also an employer, later told Metro that students in Bengal lack social and communication skills despite being educated.
“Students from Bengal are educated and skilled and yet not employable because they lack the social skills, communication skills, and the ability to market and brand themselves. They are not lacking in core areas of knowledge but are weak in these areas,” he said.
“We cannot blame them because it is we who are not teaching them. Being educated and employable are two different things. We are training them to be educated but not employable.”
The education symposium saw industry stalwarts and educationists discuss the possibilities education has created in the state, the areas where students from Bengal need to catch up with those from other states and the strengths of the students from the state.
In his introductory speech, Dhruba Mukherjee, the CEO of ABP Pvt Ltd, referred to the ILO (International Labour Organisation) report and said open unemployment and low-paid employment are going up.
“That brings us to a particular question why is it so? Is it a question of employability or is it a question of what is coming out of the education system is not good enough to be paid full employment wages or to be employed at all....”
“Of the kind of population who can be enrolled in the education system, a lot of them are not enrolling in Bengal. That doesn’t mean they are not studying, probably they are leaving the state and going somewhere else to study and that has a direct bearing on education as a whole in Bengal,” said Mukherjee.
The theme of the third edition of the education symposium was “Building Doors Changing Perspectives”. There were two panels to discuss “Study in Bengal”. The discussions were moderated by cardiac surgeon Kunal Sarkar.
The first panel comprised Bidyut Majumdar, deputy director, JIS Group; Satyajit Chakrabarti, pro-vice-chancellor, University of Engineering and Management, and director, Institute of Engineering and Management; Saikat Maitra, chief advisor, Dr BC Roy Society, and former vice-chancellor, Makaut; and Uma Bhattacharjee, founder secretary, Kingston Educational Institute.
The second panel comprised Satyam Roychowdhury, chancellor, Sister Nivedita University, chancellor, Techno India University Tripura and co-founder and MD, Techno India Group; Samit Ray, chancellor, Adamas University, and chairman, RICE Group; and Bose of IIHM.
Sarkar asked the heads of institutes on the first panel what more could be done in terms of employability.
Chakrabarti said: “Globally and nationally, employers are looking for talent. They do not care if the talent is obtained from Bengal, Hyderabad, or Bengaluru. They are looking for highly talented and capable manpower which Bengal supplies.”
Majumdar said: “If you see the numbers of students in jobs in other states, they are from Bengal and that, too, are in leading positions....”
