The Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation (TNSDC) will be rolling out courses on drones, 5G and ChatGPT for government college students across Tamil Nadu under the ‘Naan Mudhalvan’ scheme.
“For the following semester, around 4,767 students have already enrolled for ChatGPT, while 3,600 have opted for drone testing and design sessions,” J. Innocent Divya, Managing Director of Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation (TNSDC) told The Hindu.
GUVI, an IIT-M and IIM-A incubated Ed-tech company will be handling the ChatGPT course, while Vaayusastra Aerospace, incubated under IIT-M Incubation Cell and IIT-M Rural Technology Business Incubator, will teach students about drone basics, aerodynamics, design, calibration, simulation, assembly and flying.
Ms. Divya said the focus would be on strengthening infrastructure and connectivity (referring to mobile/Internet) in rural pockets to provide hassle-free education. “We will work with TANFINET (Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation Limited) and the Information Technology Department for this,” she added.
During May and June 2023, the TNSDC conducted around 56 job fairs across Tamil Nadu, where 26,200 students were offered jobs with various firms. Of these, 21,000 were from arts and science streams, while the rest were from engineering courses. Students from arts and science streams were placed in sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance, logistics, IT-enabled services, sales and marketing. “We had the job fairs while the students were finishing their course. But this year, we want to start early hiring and we intend to start from September 2023,” Ms. Divya noted
Ms. Divya further said that over 15,000 students from government and government-aided schools in Tamil Nadu who cleared their Class XII exams this year and were planning to discontinue further studies have been counselled, and have now opted for arts and science, engineering, industrial training institutes and other courses.
“This year of the nearly 2.23 lakh students cleared Class XII exams, of which nearly 82,000 students did not apply for higher education due to their family and financial situation. With the help and support of the school education department, all Collectors, sub-collectors and other government officials, we formed teams to identify these students,” she added.
Around 30,000 students were identified and detailed discussions were held with them. Finally, over 15,000 students agreed to pursue their higher education. Loans were also arranged for deserving candidates.
