Need to remove gap between degrees & jobs, says Dharmendra Pradhan

SAMBALPUR: Former Union minister and Sambalpur MP Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday laid the foundation stone for the Residential Internship and Skill Hub for Industry (RISHI) building at Odisha State Open University (OSOU) here on the occasion of Teachers’ Day.

Pradhan also launched two new contemporary courses - Self-Healthcare & Wellness and AI Tools for Collaborative Learning - aimed at enhancing teachers’ skills.

He said the biggest challenge before the education system was to eliminate the gap between academic degrees and employability. He said the mindset that ‘a degree is everything’, which has continued since the British era, needed to change with greater emphasis on practical education and skills.

Pradhan said the RISHI project would provide students with practical training aligned with industry requirements and help make them self-reliant. “At a time when global instability and disruptions in supply chains are affecting employment opportunities, youths need to be encouraged to become job creators rather than merely job seekers,” he said.

The MP said nearly one crore young people in Odisha, constituting around a quarter of the state’s population, belonged to the ‘Amrit Peedhi’. They would shape the state’s future over the next century. The RISHI project would serve as a bridge to make this generation skilled and self-reliant.

Recalling OSOU’s difficult beginnings, Pradhan said the university, established in Sambalpur in 2015, had struggled during its initial eight years and was left with little beyond a building. Following government intervention, Rs 20 crore was sanctioned under the PM-USHA scheme for infrastructure development. From starting with virtually no admissions, the university now has around 40,000 students, he said.

He announced plans to develop Sambalpur as a skill laboratory, with OSOU offering short-term, employment-oriented courses to rural youths who are unable to pursue regular school or college education.

He also said audio-visual laboratories would be established over the next few years to train around 1,250 content creators and influencers. They would use social media to showcase the culture, lifestyle, traditions, natural beauty, temples and rural economy of their villages to audiences across the world.

Pradhan also said innovation and practical skills would be crucial to addressing emerging challenges posed by artificial intelligence and cybercrime, and driving social development.