Delhi entrepreneurship university may begin first academic session next year
New Delhi: The first academic session of Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University is expected to start from next year, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday.
Addressing a digital press briefing, Kejriwal said the board of the university has been constituted and its members held the first meeting on Monday. “The Delhi skill and entrepreneurship university has been established through an Act of the Delhi legislative assembly. I am glad to announce that the university has started functioning today. The first academic session is expected to start next year. It will be done in close consultation with companies who will be treated as customers in this endeavour, so that courses are in tune with industry demand. The courses which will be taught in the university will be designed in a manner that the students get jobs based on the design and curriculum of the course,” Kejriwal said.
The government has appointed Dr Neharika Vohra, the head of the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-Ahmedabad, as the vice-chancellor of the university.
The board members include Pramath Raj Sinha, founding dean of the Indian School of Business and founder of Ashoka University; Genpact founder Pramod Bhasin; Naukri.com founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani; entrepreneur Shrikant Sastri and IP University founding vice-chancellor KK Aggarwal.
Kejriwal said the sole objective of the university is to ensure a conducive environment for those seeking to become entrepreneurs.
“Students will be imparted skills and training at the university so that they can easily get a job as soon as they pass out from the institute or can pursue business by getting hands-on business training,” he said.
A senior official in the education department said the university will have multiple campuses or centres across Delhi and the admission process along with its schedule will be prepared by the board in the coming months.
“The main campus will be located in southeast Delhi, even as there will be multiple centres in different parts of the city. The admission schedule will be rolled out next year, 2-3 months before the start of the academic session,” the official said.
The chief minister said that those designing courses will show the curriculum to industry bodies and companies and seek their feedback on who job-oriented it is.
“The university should also address the qualitative gap that exists in the skilling sector. This was seen when all industries, businesses, shops, and markets were shut down during the coronavirus-induced lockdown, and people lost their jobs. With the easing of lockdown restrictions, I met people who did not have jobs, and those who had businesses but did not have people to work for them. It means that both were available, but they could not come together on a platform. We then started a job portal and created a common platform for both job-seekers and job-providers. As a result, there were lakhs of jobs available for job-seekers in Delhi. This is the same concept,” Kejriwal said.
Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who holds the education portfolio, said the university will focus both on quality and quantity — providing high-quality courses in the entire spectrum of skill training, from traditional skills to those of the future, and ensuring that the intake of students is large enough to cater to the existing demand.