Bangalore: The first day of "Continuum 2007", the annual event of Campus-Connect, a division of CareerNet Consulting, was focused on ?Emerging trends in Technical education?. A panel discussion on the theme brought together various industry leaders, viz. Kalyan Kumar Banerjee, Senior VP-Commiunications BU, R&D Services, Mind Tree Consulting, Anand Sudarshan, MD and CEO, Manipal Education, Dr. Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Chief People Officer, Cambridge Solutions, Rakesh Singh, VP Products and MD, Citrix and Nandkishore Rathi, Director APAC Recruitment.

The panel discussed trends in technical education that could emerge by 2020, as well as the challenges in the quality of education.

"Since there has been a lot of growth in the last few years, there has been dilution in the quality of education. The education system needs to be revamped so as to address the needs of the industry," said Banerjee. In this context, he stated, it was essential that the industry has collaboration with the academia, not only in terms of internship programs but the entire life cycle of the education program. He added that if India has become the IT hub today, it definitely has the potential to become the education hub by 2020.

"Today a lot of educational goals are driven by 'pocket-pocket aspirations', which is deeply embedded in the psyche of the people,? said Sudarshan. Just like the IT industry, the quality of education will ramp up if international universities are invited to set up in India, he added. He observed that in the U.S., universities have grown because of the endowment while in India, out of 70 percent of the funds that are allocated to universities, 40 percent is spent on setting up campuses and operations. He predicted that by 2020, if the academia understands industry requirements and start looking the students as customers, the quality of education will change.

He discouraged IT companies to hire students in the third semester of the academic program, which discourages them to focus on their studies. This statement was supported by the academicians who attended the discussion.

Singh emphasized on the need of overseas exposure to help reach the vision by 2020. Foreseeing the cringe in the talent pool in the other sectors, Rathi reminded the need for the companies to create awareness among the students in the campus about the opportunities in the different areas other than IT.