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TRICHY: With the world appearing to be inching towards fourth industrial revolution (4IR), educational industries should brace themselves for an imminent sea change, vice chancellor of Malaysia-based Binary University College of Management & Entrepreneurship, Sulochana Nair, has said.

The 4IR is expected to become a major industrial movement, which will be driven by digital revolution wherein new technologies that are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds, will leave a significant impact on economies and industries, she said.

Sulochana was speaking at the third ‘international conference on advanced management (ICAM) 2018’ organised by Jamal Institute of Management (JIM) here on Saturday. The topic of the seminar was ‘Changes & challenges in knowledge era’.

“We’re already witnessing the signs and symptoms of 4IR,” said Sulochana who was the chief guest of the programme. “This will be completely different to the other three revolutions in every aspect. The digital revolution will change the way we live, work and behave against each other.”

As a result, schools and colleges across the world should revamp their education system and focus predominantly on creativity and innovation, she said. “In the current curriculum, there is no scope for creativity. Educational institutions should move on to suit the current necessity,” she urged.

The VC spoke about how the Malaysian government has been prepping themselves by bringing changes into the education system to be better prepared for revolution. “In colleges, instead of providing cumulative grade points average (CGPA), we are now grading students based on integrated grade points average (I-CGPA). It’s because we want the current generation to move out beyond the traditional curriculum and focus on inculcating inter-disciplinary skills,” Nair said. Communication and collaboration skills are must for students, she asserted.

ICAM 2018 coordinator S A Lourthuraj said that it is important for institutions – especially b-schools – to focus more on stressing the importance of knowledge to students. “Human resources department in many MNCs are now being called knowledge resources and now knowledge economy has replaced general economy,” he said.

