Towards industry-academia partnerships
While delivering the D.V. Narasimha Rao Memorial lecture on ‘Indian software industry: opportunities and challenges’ on January 3 in Mysore, N.R. Narayana Murthy chairman of Infosys Technologies and one of the most respected leaders of Indian industry made a remark to the effect that only 25 percent of India’s annual output of over 300,000 engineering graduates is employable. This remark has sent shock waves through the corridors of Indian industry. With the Indian economy notching a 7-8 percent year-on-year rates of growth and globally acknowledged as one of the fastest growing worldwide, the huge shortage of skilled professionals estimated by NASSCOM at 550,000 by 2010 has prompted deep thinking in corporate India about ways and means to boost the quality of engineers graduating from Indian academia to improve industry productivity.In particular there is revived interest in mutually reinforcing industry-academia partnerships with a view to raising teaching-learning standards in tertiary level educational institutions. Corporate managements are becoming increasingly aware that well-schooled engineering graduates need less on-the-job training which is currently costing India Inc massively.
In the Indian context, provision of education — especially higher education — was always the responsibility of the king and later of government. Private funding and initiatives have never been very pronounced in the Indian context, and if any investment was made in education it was sporadic. Exceptions like Tata Sons are a rarity rather than the rule.
Therefore criticism that industry has not done enough for academia is somewhat premature. Industry-academia partnerships are still in the nascent stage for numerous reasons and such partnerships as have been formed, have not been as mutually beneficial as the partners and the public would desire.
If one carefully examines the charters of most universities and institutions of higher education in technology and engineering, it becomes clear that all of them are focused on classroom teaching. The little research activity they undertake is rarely directed toward solving larger societal problems. That is classified as development research, and not their responsibility. This is problem # 1.
Moreover in the minimal research activity they undertake, academic communities typically are hesitant to make any output or time frame commitments. On the other hand for corporates which outsource research, clear objectives and time frames are vital conditions of contract. This is problem # 2.
Problem # 3 is the entrenched organisational bureaucracies of higher education institutions. Invariably ownership and credit sharing issues become points of conflict. Moreover the degree of autonomy institutions in India enjoy is relatively low. With the exception of a few elite institutions, bureaucratic inertia is a drag on industry-academia partnerships even if college managements are willing.
An additional problem is that because of excessive government control which has adversely affected academic environments and remuneration, Indian academia is unable to attract the best talent. This has reduced the scope to build the critical mass required for in-depth research and constructing new knowledge. Recent media reports indicate rising faculty vacancies even in the country’s widely admired IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management).
One can list more reasons why industry-academia partnerships have not taken off, yet these are the critical ones. But the situation is changing following the gradual liberalisation of the Indian economy with large multinational companies setting up operations in India. Given their experience of other societies in which industry-academia collaboration has spurred innovation and commercialisation of research output, they are in the forefront of outsourcing research to universities. Indian corporates have yet to learn the ropes of structuring agreements, stipulating outcomes and managing industry-academia partnerships.
In this connection the US offers outstanding examples of successful industry-academia partnerships. Among them are the collaboration agreements forged between blue-chip corporates such as IBM, HP, GE and front-rank universities such as Ucal, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT and Harvard among others. Indeed Silicon Valley’s success in developing the global information technology industry is the outcome of thriving tripartite partnerships between industry, the University of California, Stanford etc and venture capitalists. Together they have developed successful working models which ensure win-win outcomes for all partners. A website I recommend as a good read for all those engaged in establishing industry-academia partnerships is http://www.southern.org/pubs/innovationU/Innovation U.pdf. It details how research in universities has directly impacted the economic success of the United States of America. We can draw some learning from the US (and China) examples and adapt them to stimulate high potential industry-academia partnerships in India.
(Dr. M.P. Ravindra is vice-president and head, education and research, Infosys Technologies Ltd. The views expressed are personal)