Industry Academia Collaboration
in the Built Environment

APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME AS A SUSTAINABLE MECHANISM TO BRIDGE THE SKILLS GAP IN INDIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

 

Vaishali Anagal1,  Anupa Manewa2,  Mohan Siriwardena3,  Sujata Karve4,  Sharvey Dhongde5,  Pooja Ghorpade6

1, Associate Professor, Dr. B. N. College of Architecture, Pune, India

2 and 3, Senior Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

4 and 5, Professor, Dr. B. N. College of Architecture, Pune, India

6, Assistant Professor, Dr. B. N. College of Architecture, Pune, India

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                                                                                                                  ABSTRACT

Innovation-oriented knowledge creation has become a priority for Higher Education Institutions that address the challenges of low employability. The situation is worse in India due to the unemployability of graduates higher than that of other youth. In India, a major skills and knowledge gap in the Built Environment (BE) has been highlighted and one of the recent reports states that the graduates’ skills and employer requirements as crucial to address the gap between skills demand and supply to boost the growth (Rooj, 2022). The majority of the construction organizations operating in India face problems in recruiting staff, noting that graduates lack qualifications, skills, knowledge, and motivation and they are not fit for the job. Apprenticeship programs offer a combination of education and skills to the student, create an innovative employer-funded financing model, help organizations create their talent pipeline, and help universities embed employability for their courses. Linking the HE programs to learning-by-doing and learning-while-earning will make HE more inclusive and demand-driven. This paper addresses the potential of introducing apprenticeship models in collaboration with HE institutions and the industry. Apart from the detailed literature review, data was collected from 10 interviews among academics and industry professionals and analyzed through NVivo 14 software. The results identified the current skills gap in most of the built environment disciplines (real estate and infrastructure) and emphasized developing close ties or strengthening the existing ties between industry and academia, modernization curriculum to accommodate sustainable apprenticeship programs towards minimizing such skills gap in the industry. The results further highlight the importance of policy-level backing to initiate such innovative models.

 

Keywords: Skills gaps, skills demand, apprenticeship programs, built environment, Indian construction sector etc.

 

 

Cite this article as: Anagal V., Manewa A., Siriwardena M., Karve S., Dhongde S., Ghorpade P. (2023), Apprenticeship scheme as a sustainable mechanism to bridge the skills gap in Indian construction industry, Chitkara University Doctoral Consortium-2023, 3-4 Nov. 2023