Industry body should participate in creating centres of excellence: Shashi Tharoor

NEW DELHI: Shashi Tharoor, minister of state for human resource development, sought industry body CII's participation in creating academic centres of excellence in the country at the AICTE-CII awards ceremony in New Delhi today.

Speaking on the occasion of felicitating industry achievers at the awards ceremony, Tharoor emphasised on the need to set up incubation centres with industry bodies for science and other disciplines like art, culture and social science.

Welcoming the efforts made by IT major Infosys for setting up centres of excellence for training their employees, he called upon corporates to look beyond their employees to target talented students apart from their immediate beneficiaries.

Tharoor also mentioned that demographic dividend could be achieved only by spreading higher education and enhancing the employability of the millions of young people joining the workforce. "The 540 million people, who are below 35 years of age are a national asset and it is important to give them a productive platform to harness their talents and productivity. Reforms in the education sector would continue and proactive steps would be taken to promote greater industry-academia interface, particularly in the field of higher education," he said in a statement.