The Ministry of Human Resources Development has launched the Scheme for Higher Education Youth in Apprenticeship and Skills (SHREYAS) for providing industry apprenticeship opportunities to the general graduates exiting in April 2019 through the National Apprenticeship Promotional Scheme (NAPS). It aims to enhance the employability of Indian youth by providing ‘on the job work exposure’ and earning of stipend. It targets in all the tracks together, it is proposed to cover 50 lakh students by 2022.

Body:

Objectives of SHREYAS:

• To improve employability of students by introducing employment relevance into the learning process of the higher education system.
• To forge a close functional link between education and industry/service sectors on a sustainable basis.
• To provide skills which are in demand, to the students in a dynamic manner.
• To establish an ‘earn while you learn’ system into higher education.
• To help business/industry in securing good quality manpower.
• To link student community with employment facilitating efforts of the Government.

Role of SHREYAS:

• SHREYAS is a programme basket comprising the initiatives of three Central Ministries, namely the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and the Ministry of Labour& Employment viz the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), the National Career Service (NCS)and introduction of BA/BSc/BCom (Professional) courses in the higher educational institutions.
• The scheme is for students in degree courses, primarily non-technical, to introduce employable skills into their learning, promote apprenticeship as integral to education.
• SHREYAS portal will enable educational institutions and industry to log in and provide their respective demand and supply of apprenticeship. The matching of students with apprenticeship avenues will take place as per pre-specified eligibility criteria.
• These courses will be available to them from Academic year April-May, 2019. More than 40 higher educational institutions have already been tied up for taking up embedded apprenticeship courses.
• The scheme would be operationalized by coordination of Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and the Ministry of Labour.

Conclusion:

Education with skills is the need of the hour and the SHREYAS will be a major effort in this direction to make degree students more skilled, capable, employable and aligned to the needs of our economy so that they contribute to country’s progress and also obtain gainful employment.