In our country still the majority of university courses produce 'just graduates' on paper qualifications who are unemployable because of lack of industrial exposure. It is very unfortunate that most of these graduates are not educated and trained for the job market.
New building premises of OpenArc Industrial Campus
at Kirulapone |
Many graduates are on the roads demanding job opportunities and they are jobless not because they are incapable of performing a job but their skill sets and attitudes do not match with industry needs.
Why? The reason being they are not exposed to other skills and practical use of the theoretical knowledge. More often than not, we have to spend a lot of time in providing industrial training for these graduates to be effective at their jobs.
On the other hand it becomes an uphill task for us to change their attitudes and give the right work culture at office after recruiting them.
Soft skills are another area they have not been introduced to during their University education. Lack of communication skills and English language barrier are other prime concerns.
Today, we find a new problem where students have gone ahead and attained degrees in various disciplines but they do not possess working abilities because their born talents and industrial skills are not in those chosen fields: as a result, they become ineffective at the jobs particularly in the fields such as IT and Engineering where we seek people with a lot of creativity and passion for work; Daya Hettiarachchi expressed his concerns as the Chairman/CEO of OpenArc Systems Management which is a leading software company providing employment opportunities to young IT graduates.
Daya Hettiarachchi, Founder Chairman/CEO, OpenArc |
How do we address these problems? The need of the hour and the solution is to introduce 'Industrial Campuses' where students get exposed to different jobs even before they start their study programmes and understand the job functions of the chosen fields. They need to understand the jobs that they are supposed to perform at the very end - after graduation.
This is a vision beyond the horizon that we need to give them before they select and commence their study programmes. Further, the need of the hour is to build the work culture within them while undergoing the study programmes by way of exposing them to work environments and providing practical work tasks in the real world.
How do we do that? It is not easy for every University or educational institution to do that unless they have access to working environments where real world jobs exist within their educational environments.
At the same time the educational institutions should get the teachers who have the industry exposure. OpenArc being a computer software company situated within the OpenArc campus we are in a position to do this and OpenArc College of Business and Technology [OCBT] campus was formed with this intention and for the said purpose; Daya Hettiarachchi added.
In our Industrial Campus, we will show the prospective students of different fields particularly in Information Technology and Management, the exact job functions that they will be carrying out after the graduation and recruitment.
Then we teach them, and practically engage them in IT and Management work so that they become fully geared to be good software Engineers and practical Project Managers.
We continuously keep them in touch with the IT projects at our Software Company (OpenArc Systems Management) and give them opportunities to do part time jobs in software development. This is the way we produce best Engineers with experience for the industry.
This is how we produce the best employable graduates who are the real world experts with all talents, attitudes and skills required by the employers in the industry. Daya Hettiarachchi explained his vision. |
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