At a webinar on Industry-Academia linkage for accelerating development to achieve the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), DCCI president Rizwan Rahman laid emphasis on working together between universities and private sectors to convert the country’s youth population into skilled human capital.
The webinar held by DCCI on changing landscape for development and titled ‘Industry-Academia collaboration: New frontier’ he suggested arranging internationally accredited skills development training in the country for continuous re-skilling and up-skilling programmes.
He has called for establishing universities to offer research and innovative programme to offer high quality post-graduation education and training.
It needs providing incentives like tax exemption to private sector for R&D collaboration with Universities and increasing public investment in education, skills development and research and development.
Dr. Md. Sabur Khan, Chairman, Board of Trustees of Daffodil International University presented the keynote paper. He said Universities should not only focus to bring out graduates every year, rather they have to think that how much the graduates learn soft and hard skills during their studentship.
Experts in the webinar on Saturday also laid emphasis on the role of technology to achieve sustainable transformation to a new frontier of growth.
DCCI president Rizwan Rahman, Education Minister Dr. Dipu Moni, was chief guest University Grants Commission chairman Dr. Kazi Shahidullah was special guest on the occasion.
Rizwan Rahman said newly passed graduates are struggling in job market because the country’s conventional education system lacks skill-orientation education to meet industries demand.
He said around 2 million new graduates enter job market every year and 38.6 percent unemployment among graduates showed there is a big mismatch between skills and industry’s demand.
University-industry collaboration is therefore a must and has already emerged as a new means to elevate the country’s competitiveness in terms of developing skilled workforce.
Dr. Dipu Moni said that there is a need to change mindset to achieve better industry and academia linkage. For a sustainable and commercially viable research ecosystem, she urged the private sector to invest more in the education sector.
Universities should not only focus on education and degree but must focus on providing necessary trainings. She said there is still a big gap between industry and academia and we should do a mapping to identify skill requirements.
Despite Covid 19 has manifold socio economic impacts, it has also created lot of opportunities and a tripartite collaboration among industry-academia and research can reap these benefits in future. To cope up with the challenges of 4IR, she emphasized on more vocational and technical education.
Prof. Dr. Kazi Shahidullah, urged the private sector to invest more in research and education sector. He also called upon the universities to frame out timely and internationally standard curriculum.