Date:10/02/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/02/10/stories/2006021025140300.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

VTU inculcates `enterprise culture' in students

Special Correspondent

`Engineering colleges can also produce good entrepreneurs'

Bangalore: Engineering colleges can produce not only graduates with technical skills but also those who can start and grow new business enterprises. The Visvesvaraya Techonolgical University believes in this. Of course it helps that most new enterprises in this region are based on technology.

VTU established its Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC) almost three years ago with the support of the National Science and Technology Development Board and the Union Department of Science and Technology.

The university found that engineering colleges have expert faculty members in different branches of engineering, good laboratories and libraries, including digital libraries and computer laboratories and there are local industries around these colleges. This background enables students to take up an entrepreneurial career, provided they are given the necessary awareness, guidance and motivation in regard to business opportunities, technology changes, marketing and preparing practical business plans.

Under the EDC programmes, knowledge and skills of students and the faculty are enhanced through workshops, seminars and networking opportunities where industries are involved. To these have now been added video documentaries through the EDUSAT programmes, the VTU beams to engineering colleges affiliated to it.

VTU Vice-Chancellor K. Balaveera Reddy, who presided over an EDC Advisory Board meeting earlier this week, said top executives of major industries are being invited to talk to gatherings of engineering college students and faculty; some talks will be transmitted through EDUSAT. EDC branches will be set up in all engineering colleges in the months to come and entrepreneurship will become part of the undergraduate curriculum. A postgraduate course is being planned.

"These initiatives of VTU will definitely meet the challenge of unemployment by enhancing the possibilities of an enterprise culture among students and motivating them to become job providers rather than job seekers and accelerate our progress to become a developed nation," Mr. Reddy said.