The aim of India’s higher education system is attaining sustainable development and achieving higher growth rates which could be enabled through creation, transmission and dissemination of knowledge. Higher education at all levels in the country is witnessing a consistent growth pattern marked by the setting up of new institutions and the improvement of the existing ones. Demand for qualified teachers and faculty members over the next few years would be substantial and will become extremely critical for states to expand the current institutional capacities, not only of infrastructure but also of qualified and trained faculty members.
Skill Development and Entrepreneurship efforts across the country have been highly fragmented so far. Though India enjoys the demographic advantage of having the youngest workforce with average age of 29 years in comparison with the advanced economies, as opposed to developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60% and 90% of the total workforce, India records a low 5% of workforce (20-24 years) with formal employability skills.
Entrepreneurs play an important role in the economic development of a country. Successful entrepreneurs innovate, bring new products and concepts to the market, improve market efficiency, build wealth, create jobs, and enhance economic growth. Entrepreneurs convert ideas into economic opportunities through innovations which are considered to be major source of competitiveness in an increasingly globalizing world economy.
By 2020, India’s population is expected to become the world’s youngest; more than 500 million Indian citizens will be under 25 years of age and more than two thirds of the population will be eligible to work. This means that a growing number of India’s youth need the right educational infrastructure to develop skills and adequate opportunities to get employed or become entrepreneurs.
India is rapidly enlarging its research presence globally. Its output expanded nearly three times the world average over the last decade, some 146%, from 21,269 Web of Science papers in 2003 to 45,639 in 2012. It is an impressive growth and gained for the nation an increase in world share of 1.1%, from 2.5% to 3.6%.For 2008 to 2012, India captured its greatest world share of papers in engineering and technology at 4.8%.
In a country with more than 6,50,000 villages, where more than half of its population live in rural areas and villages. Most are remote and too isolated to benefit from the country’s impressive economic progress. Yet there’s a growing desire among people in rural India to be part of the modern Digital India. But the last-mile delivery has always been a challenge for India due to low technology literacy among the rural citizens.
With the advent of globalization and opening up of Indian economy to outside world, competition among industries has become stiff. To solve their engineering problems they look up now to engineering institutions. Similarly, there is an urgent need to prepare engineering students for jobs in multinational companies, by exposing them to newer technologies and engineering methodologies.