| Coimbatore: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will soon introduce a policy that will empower students pursuing technical education to launch their own startups. The policy is in the final stage of drafting and will be tabled soon, said the AICTE chairman, Anil Sahasrabuddhe, here on Wednesday.
Sahasrabuddhe was in the city to inaugurate a conference titled Bridge 2016 that was organised by ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu at Hotel Le Meridian. "We have formed a committee headed by the vice-chancellor of Gujarat Technical University to frame a policy for startups. It has met thrice so far and I was told that the policy was in the final stage of drafting," he said.
Sahasrabuddhe also pointed out that Gujarat Technical University and Abdul Kalam Technical University, Kerala, have already introduced a policy for start-ups. "Taking a leaf out of them, we want to come up with a policy for all technical institutions," he said.
The AICTE chairman also stressed that for students to come up with startups it was essential to offer them a suitable academic structure.environment. "We need to revamp the academic structure. The curricula should be competence-based and not content-based. There are many institutes that do not revise the syllabus for years. It is recommended that they revise it every three years at least. If possible, every year," Sahasrabuddhe said.
Citing an example of a civil engineering student who designed a satellite, he said most institutions did not have good labs. "And if there are labs, they are not utilised properly," the AICTE chairman further said. Sahasrabuddhe also put emphasis on the need for intellectual property rights and patent cells, research parks and angel investors.
The director of Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI), government of Tamil Nadu, K Rajaraman, also engaged a session. He said aspirational levels among people to become an entrepreneur was fairly low in the country.
"Most colleges focus on getting jobs for their students and there is hardly any importance given to entrepreneurship. Not many institutes teach entrepreneurship either. This has to change," Rajaraman said.
The Entrepreneurship Development Institute, he said, would ensure that at least 10 students passing out from each college launches an enterprise by 2018.
"We are also setting up supportive ecosystem for this by 2017," Rajaraman further said. |