Thursday, June 05, 2008
Coimbatore: The industry is looking for graduates who are sound in the subject knowledge and communication skills. Students should be sound in these two areas to increase their employability skills.

The onus of this tremendous task lies squarely with the teachers, Bharathiar University Vice-Chancellor G. Thiruvasagam said here recently.


Inaugurating a two-day faculty development programme at the Nehru Arts and Science College for faculty members of Nehru Group of Institutions, he urged teachers to be continuous learners. They should take pride in the fact that they were learning professors and not learned professors in the past sense.

Continuous learners
“Industries are looking for two capabilities, namely, task performance and conceptual performance. Task performance referred to knowledge in core area and conceptual performance referred to behaviour and application orientation,” the Vice-Chancellor said.

He said a university curriculum should comprise five components, viz., language and communication, presentation skills, personality enrichment, computing skill and acquisition of a foreign language.

Terming teaching a social function, he said it was sad that teaching as a profession did not enjoy the same status as that of medicine, engineering and law.

But, the benefits of teaching could be felt over a maximum number of years.

“Taking advantage of enhanced educational facilities, many young men and women from disadvantaged backgrounds have acquired places of high prestige in society,” Mr. Thiruvasagam added.

P.Krishna Kumar, Secretary, Nehru Group of Institutions, A.Arunachalam, Principal, Nehru Arts and Science College, and A.Thanikodi, Director, UGC – Academic Staff College, Bharathiar University, spoke.