Industry academia collaboration: How effective?

The penetration of Information Technology (IT) in every field of business has opened up a plethora of employment opportunities at the global level. India has become a global hub for IT services export, where industry has felt a pressing need for acquiring and retaining competent talent. However, there is a strong feeling in the industry circles that students graduating from engineering colleges are not industry ready and many of them are not employable. Academia has also felt a strong need in terms of producing the necessary quality talent. It has been quite some time since industry and academia started working together to enhance the employability of engineering graduates and make them industry ready. Various models have been initiated by big industry captains to make this collaboration workable. But the big question is how effective these models are in terms of their applicability and usefulness to all the stakeholders in industry and academia. Through this paper, we discuss some of the offerings under the industry academia collaboration model. An analysis of various challenges being encountered during the evaluation of effectiveness of such models is also discussed. A few potential cost effective ways to address the underlying challenges are put forth towards the end of the paper.