Purdue University, Wiley India tie up for skills' training

Purdue University in the US already has a small presence in India - a tie-up with the Noida-based Galgotia University, for instance - but is now seeking to increase this manifold. It has teamed up, not with another university, but with the publisher Wiley India - a subsidiary of leading global education publisher John Wiley and Sons - to offer a range of online skill development courses.

All universities can now take advantage of these courses by entering into a contract with Wiley India.

As is well known, the gap between the knowledge imparted by educational institutions and the actual skills required to carry out jobs in the workplace is huge in India, and many agencies have lately sprung up to help in bridging it.

But Purdue's courses stand apart for a singular reason. "Five years ago, Purdue got a big US government grant which it has used to set up a powerful mainframe system, primarily for engineering courses," says Vikas Gupta, Managing Director, Wiley India. "It has been loading simulations on this mainframe which help the learning process immensely."

Setting up state-of-the-art engineering design laboratories , for instance, is extremely expensive, and few engineering institutes in India are able to do so. But simulations can be an excellent substitute.

"For instance, if a civil engineering student is learning to build a bridge, he can actually test, using the simulator, what happens when materials of different tensile strengths are used," says Gupta.

A few hundred simulations have already been developed, particularly related to 'very large scale integration' (VLSI) designs. These simulations, developed in close consultation with industry, replicate the practical challenges faced in work situations.

Fourteen courses will begin from September - seven of them relating to engineering and seven to business - with the number being slowly increased to over 100. They will cost Rs 15,000-20,000 per course, each one lasting six to 16 weeks, but can only be accessed through universities, not by individual students.

What is also likely to contribute to their value is that the examination at the end of the course will be no cakewalk. It will be conducted by Purdue, with TCS providing technical support.

"Different universities have different approaches to exams," says Gupta. "In most, students get in easily and get out easily too with their degree. In some, like the IITs and IIMs, getting in is very difficult, but getting out is easy - hardly anyone fails. Purdue is taking the third path: anybody can enroll, but getting through the exam that provides the certificate will be very difficult."