The Industrial Technical Institutes (ITIs), established by both the government and private sector, have been facing numerous challenges with the academic standards as well as the employability of the trained students. With approximately 15,000 ITIs with around 25 lakh available seats, only around 12 lakhs students enroll in their courses. And out of those enrolled for training, only around 50% get placed in the industry. While the demand for well trained students has never ebbed, it has been a challenge to produce quality talent and this phenomenon has remained thus for several years now.
Despite the best efforts of the government, the ITIs and the industry to bridge the gap, the core issues remain unresolved. These include inability to attract good quality faculty as required by the ITIs, curriculum mismatch with the expectations of the industry, poor proficiency of students in English, limited industry exposure and placement opportunities. With the goal of India to become Viksit Bharat by 2047 and its efforts for Make in India push, it is imperative that there is quantitative and qualitative enhancement of talent output from the ITIs. If there is a resolve and commitment to the transformation agenda at the ITIs, AI could play a significant role in dramatically changing the narrative about the functioning of the ITIs.
AI could be a great leveler when it comes to knowledge access. Expertise is no longer restricted to certain individuals or locations hence the faculty of ITIs could update their own knowledge and industry awareness with the help of AI tools. Students could use AI tools for personalised learning support, work with simulations and get continuous feedback on their learning effectiveness.
Breaking the Language Barrier
Most ITI students would prefer to learn in their mother tongue or in vernacular languages that they are familiar with. With multilingual AI systems, students no longer need to depend on the content and training in English and can feel comfortable with the language of their choice and thus have better mastery of their subject domain. They can move beyond understanding the theoretical concepts to practical and simulation based learning, thus overcoming the costs and non availability of the latest equipment and lab facilities to bring them on par with cutting edge practices in the industry.
ITI students would be able to do better preparation for job search with customised resumes, mock interviews and be prepared with the trending technologies and emerging market opportunities. Students could also get counselling on job opportunities based on their strengths, areas of interest and aspirations regarding jobs and also get advice on skill gaps and personalised career pathways.
Thus AI would help not only the well funded colleges but has the potential to transform the rural and remote institutions who are seeking help to enable their students to become better employable. This would necessitate providing the AI infrastructure to all such institutions and equipping the faculty with the right orientation for the use of AI tools. Once students and the faculty get to become fluent in the use of AI, there would be a transformative impact on the quality of production and service and customer delight. Industry would welcome the talent pool which is savvy in the use of AI tools for continuous upgrade of knowledge and as a result be better prepared to provide superior quality service to customers.
Currently the discourse on AI is taking place largely in elite institutions and metro cities. The ministry of skill development & entrepreneurship has introduced a foundational module on AI as part of the employability curriculum at the ITIs. However, further democratisation of AI would provide the opportunity for the institutions to rise to the top and the inclusive nature of technology could help build a competent cadre of technical professionals.
The writer is chairperson, GTT Foundation