Karnataka signs agreement with NASSCOM to offer industry-aligned skills to students: Report

NEW DELHI: The Karnataka higher education council has signed an agreement with IT industry body, NASSCOM (The National Association of Software and Service Companies) to provide industry-aligned skills to students for their development, as per a Times of India report.

This will benefit around 5 lakh higher education students and faculty every year, the report said.

The agreement was signed in the presence of minister of higher education, Ashwath Narayan, the report said.

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According to the report, Narayan said: "All universities in the state are covered under this MoU, it will benefit more than 5 lakh students of higher education (studying in government and private institutions) every year.”

Under this agreement, students and faculty members of the higher education institutions in Karnataka will be able to access skill development courses on the “Future Skills Prime” platform of NASSCOM, the report said.

Education minister further said that the skill development needs to focus on aligning skill programmes with standards, faculty training and infrastructure resources all three of which are included in this initiative.

“The courses available on “Future Skills Prime'' are as per national occupational standards of the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF). All these courses have access online for both faculty and students and those who want to learn these courses can access it on computers as well as tablets or smartphones,” Narayan added, as per the report.

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Under the agreement, three new programmes - digital fluency, artificial intelligence, and cyber security will become part of the curriculum and will be available for free for non-computer science students and faculty members of the state, Narayan said, as per the report.

The courses will have both theoretical and practical features guaranteeing the skill development of the students, said Narayan, according to the report.