Two New Vocational Programmes Launched in India

Mumbai, June 2013: CMC and Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand, today announced the launch of two vocational education programmes aimed at building highly skilled manpower for the construction industry and for meeting the demand of high-end areas in the IT industry. These programmes would be initially offered at CMC Academy centres in Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.

The one year PG programme in construction project management has been developed in collaboration with leading players in the construction and infrastructure sector, and is aimed at developing and sourcing well-grounded construction project managers. The programme includes real life project experience and is aimed at engineering graduates and engineering diploma holders.

The one year PG programme in data analytics and cyber security is a high-end programme covering other niche areas like adaptive business intelligence. With the increasing quantum of data crunching, advent of big data and global need for business intelligence, the demand for highly skilled individuals in the analytics domain is growing rapidly.

The PG programme in computing offers students an academic pathway to a master's degree from Unitec, by recognising the prior learning along with work experience. Students would take part in a block module in New Zealand and then complete their degree in India.

Speaking on the occasion, R Ramanan, MD and CEO, CMC, said, "CMC is committed to bridging the skills gaps by introducing specific high quality job-enabling education and training programmes to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the industry. The CMC alliance with Unitec is a strategic scalable initiative, aiming to address the vocational training skills gaps in India, in partnership with leading industries in the market place to offer world class vocational training and assist in job placements through our training academies."

"These programmes are aimed at addressing the huge need for highly skilled manpower to meet India's increasing pace of development," said Unitec chief executive, Rick Ede. "Our partnership with CMC, a well-regarded Tata enterprise, has developed well and we are keen to expand the portfolio of work-integrated vocational training programmes to be offered in India"

"The industry requires skilled people at all levels and these programmes are aimed at the building highly skilled resourced at the mid-level" said Arun Varma, CMC's global business head for education and training. "We aspire to be the largest player in the job enabling vocational education and training space."

CMC Academy currently offers job enablement training in IT, accounting and finance, soft skills and several skill areas through locations across India. CMC recently entered in an alliance with NSDC, and under the UDAAN initiative CMC plans to train graduates from Jammu and Kashmir in specialised IT skills in the area of software engineering, software development, embedded systems and IT infrastructure management through their flagship CMC JET (job enablement training) programme that will lead them to careers in the IT Industry.

India's accelerated economic growth and increasing demand for skilled manpower will require intensive efforts if they are to achieve the target of up skilling 500 million workers by 2022. Recent estimates have only 10 percent of the total workforce in the country receiving some kind of skills training (2 percent with formal training and 8 percent with informal training). According to the NSSO survey, only 6 percent of the total workforce (459 million) is in the organised sector. The World Economic Forum indicates that only 25 percent of all Indian professionals are considered employable by the organised sector. The unorganised sector is not supported by any structured skill development and training system to acquire or upgrade skills.