How top universities including IITS are redefining learning amid COVID-19
REVAMP From brick and mortar exclusive campuses, premier institutes are now collaborating with start-ups, and customising content to offer shorter, industry-specific courses as they move away from exclusivity to a mass base
nNEWDELHI: India’s top technology and B-schools including IITS are gradually shedding their exclusivity in education offerings to reach out to the masses, and a pandemic that has pushed people to accept and learn differently is accelerating the process.
From brick and mortar exclusive campuses, the country’s premier institutes are now collaborating with start-ups, and customizing content to offer shorter, industry specific courses. It is opening the institutes of eminence in India to the masses, helping them earn a good revenue and become financial sustainable.
“The attitude of top institutions has starting shifting from offering quality education to a captive audience to a mass base. They have research capability but lack outreach. They have great professors but lack the desire for marketing and branding content. They want industry partnership in learning process but sometime lack resources to invest in it,” said Santanu Paul, chief executive of Talentsprint, an ed-tech firm that has tie up with several top schools including Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C) to Indian Institute Science (IISC) in Bengaluru.paul said public expenditure on education will shrink in future, this necessitates the need for becoming more industry ready. Customized courses for both early stage professionals, senior professional and students from not so good institution will see a great demand as the job market evolves and the desire to optimize resources gains ground.
Agreed Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder of Great Learning, another edtech firm helping top schools go to masses via online and blended learning. “Changing regulations, desire to cater to masses and the business imperatives are driving such a change. And Pandemic has accelerated the processes as online education largely short- and mediumterm gaining acceptance and recognition,” Nair said, whose company has tied up with Iitmadras to offer advance program in cloud, block chain and IOT.
“The covid-19 pandemic is an unprecedented challenge to society and to businesses...and we all need to rise to this challenge. IIM-C intends...to develop better learning solutions at scale for Indian working professionals as they adapt to the emerging postpandemic world,” said Anju Seth, director at Iim-calcutta, a pioneer in such education offerings.iim-c has partnership with Talentsprint for a Fintech and Ai-powered Marketing programme, and an upcoming one on Global Economics and Digital Money.
Just not IIM-C, and IIT Madras, institutes like IIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur, Indian Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT), BITS Pillani, NIMMIS (formerly known as Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies), MICA Ahmedabad, Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad,
Grate Lakes in Chennai has partnered with ed-tech firm to cater to a wider students’ base. Deep tech like cloud and IOT, management, fin-tech and digital healthcare are among a host of specialized courses such schools are offering.”the pandemic has made industry executives acutely aware of the need to continually upgrade their professional skills, and simultaneously compelled educational institutions to devise more flexible and more modular structures of lifelong learning for working professionals,” said Anirvan Pant, a professor at IIM-C.NAIR of Great Learning said top schools are coming on board with edtech firms because they see a huge potential in this market, their industry connect, and top-class branding and marketing exercise.
“Online learning of specialized courses is different from classroom learning. It’s an experience you offer to learners. Its market worthiness and how it will help people to accelerate careers in a tough environment,” said Paul of Talentsprint.“online course with value additions like industry readiness, placement support and contemporary learning experience will drive the sector. Only a library model of online lectures will not be helpful,” said Mayank Kumar, co-founder of upgrad, another Indian ed-tech startup that has partnered with top Indian and global schools to offer such courses.
Janakiraman, a professor of computer science and engineering at IIT Madras said “as the world increasingly adopts frontier technologies such as IOT, Cloud Computing and Blockchain, it is important for our software engineers and software professionals to master these technologies. This is important if India has to retain its edge in a Software-dominated world. As India’s pioneering institution, we, at IIT Madras are happy to offer this Advanced Software Engineering program in collaboration with Great Learning.”iit Madras, has tied up with a number of edtech players to offer specialized courses and even has started a four-year graduation course on its own with multiple entry and exit options and have kept the marque joint entrance exam off its selection process for such program.
We were the first to take a positive step in offering free access to our live, online classes for students across the country. This resulted in a major upsurge in the number of students learning on Vedantu. We recorded growth of 220% during the lockdown, with more than 2 million students attending live classes and teachers delivering 8 millionplus hours of live classes.we are constantly innovating with technology at the core. Driving impact at scale is our singular vision and, the fact that we have launched an early-learner category, new product experiences and non-academic courses, keeping in mind the current situation, is testimony of this.virtual is becoming the new normal in learning. Therefore, our strategy to encourage learners to experience live, online learning will continue. We believe this will be key in driving category and business growth during the pandemic and beyond. Vedantu is exploring opportunities to scale impact, as it achieves 4x growth, and looks forward to adding 30-40% employees this year.
India has been at the forefront of making the shift towards online learning. While the education market is huge, online penetration is still at a nascent stage.therefore, investors are increasingly exploring opportunities in this market because of the untapped potential.to invest in this market, they are looking for partnerships that have longterm growth opportunity, the potential to scale and a successful business model.what kind of challenges are edtech startups facing?despite coming up with superior technology solutions for online learning, edtech startups still aren’t quite reaching the full potential because of the digital divide, as quality and equality
The education market is massive yet highly under-penetrated, with online learning forming only 2% of this. A majority of India’s student population still does not have access to a quality teacher or good learning content. The pandemic has only made the situation more stark, and online learning has emerged as the only practical solution.
Category awareness has shot off the charts because of the pandemic and it is steadily being established that live, online is the superior pedagogy for learning. It is the long-term solution for students and, as a brand, Vedantu is strongly propelling the live online category. Innovation is at our core and, as a student-focused company, we will use this to offer innovative features to our learners from within the comfort of their homes.