With more and more engineering graduates lured by higher pay packets to IT and even non-engineering jobs, the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) is now taking efforts to regain student interest about careers in the core engineering industry. As part of the HeadStart pilot project started in collaboration with Neilsoft last year for generating industry ready graduates, COEP is working on getting students excited about careers in engineering.

"Although there is a great requirement for workforce from streams of engineering like civil and mechanical given the need for infrastructure development. there are very few takers for these streams. Even those who pursue these streams often take up careers in IT," said COEP director Anil Sahasrabuddhe. The HeadStart programmes aims at changing this scenario.

Initiated as a pilot project after a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between COEP and Neilsoft in September last year, the HeadStart programme is being conducted under the aegis of NASSCOMM as part of its Global Branding programme, and is being conducted in three colleges COEP, MS University, Baroda and the BVB College of Engineering in Hubli.

The programme will be confined to some 450 students in civil, electrical and mechanical sections at the three colleges, with 50 students drawn from each stream in each college. While the initial experiment has been successful, the first year students.

The 200-hour training module, being designed by a steering committee comprising industry experts and academicians, includes industry interactions as will as 45 summer training for first-year students at Neilsoft, to expose them to the real-life applications of the theory studies in college.

"This exposure to live projects gives students a different perspective to what they study in college, as they see the ordinary line drawings and problems they solve in class come alive in an industrial set-up," said Sahasrabuddhe.

Among other aims will be improving the design and problem solving skills of the students, strengthening fundamental concepts, developing a better understanding of projects management, team work and so on. "The programme includes modules on entrepreneurship, business communication and language skills, time management, and so on," said Sahasrabuddhe.

"If this three-year pilot is found to be successful, it can be rolled out on a national level through the support of NASSCOM and possibly other companies, as it will benefit the industry as a whole," said Neilsoft Corporate Communications head Sudakshina Sinha Banerjee.