Human resources experts from leading pharmaceutical companies are of the view that lack of continuous interaction among the industry and academia has led to the deviation of academic curriculum in pharmacy colleges.

“Colleges must groom the pharmacy graduates on par with other professional students such as B.Tech and MBA streams. Moreover, the pharmacy colleges need to upgrade the syllabus in accordance with  the industry needs and should try to sync with the advanced technological developments of the contemporary world. Most of the colleges are following the old syllabus which is redundant as the industry requirements are different from what is being taught in the colleges,” observed Ram Jaladurgam, Head L&D, Hetero Drugs.

With an aim to understand the hiring trends and to address the industry academia gap for creating better career opportunities for the pharmacy professionals, the 8th Round Table Meet was held in Hyderabad. The meet was organized by Holy Mary Educational Institutions, wherein experts from all walks of pharmacy profession such as industry, academia and media expressed their views and gave suggestions and ideas to overcome the challenges faced by the pharmacy graduates in their endeavor to get placements.
Initiating the debate on the topic of challenges and opportunities for pharmaceutical graduates in the industry, Ram Mohan, director of Holy Mary group of institutions sought suggestions, ideas and advises from the industry experts so as to improve the career opportunities for the pharmacy students.

While giving his perspective S V Krishna Prasad, MD & CEO of Cito Healthcare, said, “We believe that there is a need to have a continuous interaction between the industry and the academia and must establish long term systematic procedures to understand each other’s needs and accordingly must incorporate changes in the academic curriculum to match the needs of the industry. I would suggest that an annual calendar of industry academia programmes must be designed to ensure continuous interaction for suggestions, advises and sharing ideas and knowledge which will help improve quality of education and provide better opportunities for the pharma professionals in the industry.”

Ganesh, Senior HR, Manager Mylan Labs expressed that majority of fresh pharma graduates are lacking the basic science knowledge and communication skills are poor. He felt that may be this is because of lack of experienced and committed faculty in the colleges. “We come across many fresh pharma graduates who are not even having basic science knowledge. Many of the pharmacy graduates are lacking in communication skills. To overcome all these issues, the colleges must upgrade their curriculum regularly continuous student assessment programmes in coordination with the industry which would bridge the gap between the industry and academic,” said Ganesh.

Almost all experts, Jayarama Emani, Principal Consultant, KENQOM,  KVR Reddy, Head HR, Hetero Drugs, Lakshminarayana, Head HR, NATCO Pharma, D V Reddy, Head HR, Neuland Labs and others from Aeries Tech Solutions, Quale Global agreed that industry and academia must have an annual calendar for a continuous interaction which would help bridge the gap between the industry and academia and help improve the quality of pharmacy professionals.