Sahana Subramanyam is a
final year student at Azim Premji Uni versity in Bengaluru. She is ma
joring in economics and minoring in data science. She says she chose to
focus also on data science because it bridges the demands of economics
and her love for computer programming.
The university has a
compulsory course for all students in quantitative reasoning, under
which she chose to learn the Python programming language. In the data
science course, among other things, she has learnt R, a programming
language that enables you to manage and analyse massive data bases.
Sahana is already using Python to build a model for a research project
on identifying how graded inequalities, such as caste, emerge in
societies. “Programming languages allow you to use the power of the
computer,“ Sahana says. It's a power that has touched extraordinary
levels today .
Sahana's course combination allows her to do work
that a traditional economics focused student would never be able to.
“Take renewable energy , you cannot understand it without understanding
economics, engineering, physics, politics.Real world is like that,“ says
Anurag Behar, vice-chancellor of Azim Premji University. He is critical
of the way India has fragmented education.
Many countries do not
have this siloed approach to higher education. And today , as
technology transforms the world, a growing number of educationists and
employers believe it's time for India to move to a cross-disciplinary
education system.
Sabina Dewan is co-founder and president of
JustJobs Network, a thinktank based in Washington and New Delhi focused
on finding solutions to create more and better employment. Dewan says a
confluence of mega trends -technology , urbanisation, trade, migration,
and climate change -is drastically reshaping the global employment. “The
scale and
pace of this is unprecedented and we are not equipped to understand how
these will change jobs of the future,“ she says. So it is necessary to
equip youths so they are flexible enough to respond quickly to a new
context.
Sagar Paul, head of client services at technology
consultancy ThoughtWorks, notes that businesses are already going
through massive contextual changes. Earlier, a steelmaker may at best
move into adjacencies like building automobile or white goods plates.
Today , a Google moves from a search engine to autonomous cars.
“So it requires employees to be able to shift context quickly . We need
change makers. We are not hiring for skills anymore, but a certain
aptitude,“ he says.
Paul also notes that all enterprises have
become consumerised, with the adoption of technology and services used
by individuals in the workplace. So his employees also need to relate to
people much more. “Customers are human beings, and we need to be able
to have huge empathy for them. Empathy is much higher among those from
the liberal arts, the performing arts. So we need artists who are
technologists, technologists who are artists,“ he says, adding that
India needs to introduce liberal arts into all curriculum.
Shraddhanjali Rao, head of human resources for India at enterprise
software company SAP , brings in the imagery of a jungle gym and spider
web to describe the kind of employee she values. A career, she says, is
no more a ladder for you to grow in the same function one step at a
time, but is a web of experiences across various functions and roles.
Paul Dupuis, CEO of Randstad India, which services the HR requirements
of a number of large companies, says more Indian CEOs are discussing the
need for multi-skilled employees. “Companies are looking for agile
people who have a wide perspective. They want soft skills that might be
acquired from a liberal arts back
ground,“ he says.
Dewan of JustJobs believes changes must start
at the school level and argues that six-month or one-year training
programmes cannot make up for years of poor quality education.
Prof Jagadeesh Kumar, dean of academic courses at IIT Madras, says the
institution wants its students to understand that as engineers, they
can't say they will deal with only engineering problems.“Eleven per cent
of the total coursework of a student involves working with disciplines
including ethics, life skills, environment and political science,“ he
says.
Balakrishnan Shankar, associate dean
at the school of engineering at Amritapuri in Kerala, says students are
looking to merge big data with biology and social science. “Theories
that you learn in big data or engineering can be applied to population
of birds, movement of sand dunes or census data,“ he says.
Rao of
SAP says the ability to interpret and analyse data will soon become a
base level expectation in all industries. This is why all undergraduate
programmes at Azim Premji University have quantitative reasoning as a
compulsory course. The university also has compulsory courses on public
reasoning, which trains students on the art of public discussion, and on
India, so that students can relate their core courses with the world
outside.
With inputs from Ranjani Ayyar and Shalina Pillai
