In a post-pandemic world what can we expect to see?

The panel included industry stalwarts like Deepa Dixit (Associate Professor, Chief Marketing Officer at WeSchool), Major Sonali Kadam (Director-Skills & Vocational Education, Symbiosis Skills & Professional University), Manish Dalmia (Marketing Director, NMIMS Deemed to be University) and Dr. Prasad D. Khandekar (Director Admissions, MIT World Peace University). Let’s have a look at the key takeaways from the webinar.

1. Academia
   • More new programmes, especially short-term ones, are getting launched. Students should have a more multidisciplinary approach while selecting these programmes. The electives they choose should be a mixed bag comprising what will enable them to earn, what they are passionate about, something that gives them domain knowledge, etc.
   • Students who are graduating in the next 2-4 years need to acquire skills to make them job-ready and a lot of these need to be around sunrise sectors such as health, digitalization, diagnostics, etc.
   • In addition to job skills, students need to get genuine knowledge around multiple domains as well as behavior skills, life skills, communication skills, etc. which will help them work with multiple teams
   • There will be fast track adoption of ICT in education, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 colleges. Also, teachers will need to upgrade their skills and be more agile.
   • A lot of colleges will need to invest more in infrastructure upgrades. This might also mean moving a greater percentage of their classes online, at least 25%.
   • The curriculum will be updated, there will be more problem-based learning rather than product-based learning. Colleges will need to have better industry collaboration which could mean more internships for students. This will eventually lead to universities establishing new centres/departments for such collaborations.
   • Students would be using more tools for self-study like research tools, learning management tools. Universities or other players will provide more of these.
   • Every student, be it of marketing, finance or HR stream, should now have a certain level of appreciation for how the digital world functions. Students should be able to use digital technology to attract, engage, retail, work with people online since it would become a core skill then.

We will have to figure out how we can use Data Analytics more smartly to make smarter decisions.

2. Industry – Job market, Skills in demand, Salaries
   • Demand for new skillsets
   • Certain sectors like aviation, hospitality, print media, OOH Advertising, etc. may see a slow growth rate in the next 2-3 years.
   • There will be a demand for modification of the existing workforce. E.g. Hospitality personnel can be seen moving to hospital administration.
   • More disparity would be seen in salary packages and a bigger difference in the highest and average salaries.
   • We will see some new positions appearing in the market like Chief Listening Officer, Chief Response Officer, Chief Social Media Officer, etc.

3. University Admissions
   • Admissions are likely to be delayed till September as per the confederation of Vice-Chancellors which means that the next cycle might have a ripple effect.
   • Some universities might offer provisional admissions if results are delayed.
   • Some universities like Symbiosis might launch a completely virtual admission process.
   • Engagement with students and parents will go up multiple times over.

4. New upcoming sectors
   • The rural sector will be one of these because this is what urban India depends on for the supply chain, for their raw material supplies. Tomorrow’s professionals will need to have a better understanding of this interdependability and of how rural India functions.
   • We will have to figure out how we can use Data Analytics more smartly to make smarter decisions.
   • Digital education would mean that there will be people from different geographies in the classroom so content has to be built keeping this in mind.
   • Engagement Advertising or Engagement Marketing will replace traditional advertising since we have a smarter user funnel now. Audience will be more captive as your readership that can be monitored real-time since they are logged in users and you know what they are reading, buying, exploring, etc. and you can tweak your message to them accordingly.
   • The need for Health sector professionals will go up.