English a must at Skill University with lessons in ethics, etiquette

The university, which is set to commence six undergraduate degree and 50 diploma courses with an initial intake of 600 students from June 2022, will also provide mandatory lessons in ethics and etiquette.
The programmes, keeping in line with the National Education Policy 2020, will follow the choice-based credit system (CBCS).

“Looking at the demand for English skills and soft skills from the industry, it has been decided to include these as mandatory subjects in the first semester for all degree programmes,” said Anju Sharma, principal secretary, department of labour, skill development and employment.

The Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) has joined hands with the labour, skill development and employment department to conduct and simplify English exam as well as to conduct English language classes in state’s Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs).

Two credits each for English and Ethics & Etiquette will be part of six degree courses — BSc in transport technology and electric mobility, BSc in steel technology, B Com in insurance and banking, BA in tourism and event management, BBA in logistics and BCA in cloud computing offered in its first year of inception.

For all these courses, an industry representative has been tied up with. “Every programme is industry collaborated with a compulsory one-year apprenticeship module and 30 per cent skilled courses. Some of these names in the industry are HDFC Bank, Amazon, ArcelorMittal, Adani Logistics Limited, Maruti Suzuki. These industries have also been tied up to conduct instructor training programmes in each sector,” added Anju Sharma, who is also the ex-officio vice-chancellor of KSU.

Till the campus is ready at Shilaj in Ahmedabad, for which the state government has allocated Rs 38 crore in this financial budget, the university will run from Mahatma Gandhi Labour Institute in Ahmedabad.

The government, along with running courses with higher employability prospects, also aims to upgrade its 525 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) by affiliating them to the Skill University.

The university has already affiliated five ITIs and upgraded these as skill institutes offering undergraduate courses along with affiliation to eight skill institutes that are run and sponsored by industries.

Aiming to facilitate skill among youth, KSU also aims at “entrepreneurship development” in sync with the state government’s slogan of “not be a job seeker but job creator and giver”.