Dean Faculty of Management, Samalkha Group of Institutions Chaired the 8th International Conference at Desh Bhagat University

International Conference was organized at Desh Bhagat University, Mandi Gobindgarh on 27^th September 2014. Dr. Puja Walia Mann, Dean-FOM was invited to chair the session in the conference on the topic "Challenges in Higher Education". Dr. Mann highlighted the fact that according to a survey conducted by Aspiring Minds, as many as 83 percent of graduating engineers in 2013 could not find jobs, given their poor English Language and Cognitive Skills. In fact, only 2.6 percent of graduates in India were recruited in functional roles like Accounting, 15.9 percent in Sales-related roles and 21.3 percent in the Business Process Outsourcing sector. Nearly 47 percent of Indian graduates are unemployable in any sector, irrespective of their academic degrees. The fault appears to lie in the dismal education standards in India. For this she appealed to the audience to take the quality test at personal level and set standards to be delivered to the students. She also quoted the SGI punchline of Knowledge Delivery and highlighted that instead of rote learning it is imperative to understand and apply the concepts of learning and have industry-academia interaction to bridge the employability skills set gap.

Her address was highly applauded and appreciated by the student audience and faculty present as well as the Guest of Honour- Dr. Sumandeep (Prof- Education dept).

The Management Department faculty of DBU showed their interest to be associated with research activities of SGI in future.