As many as 18 educational institutions in the district have expressed interest in joining the Campus Industrial Park programme initiated by the State government to address the issue of insufficient space for industrial use, to encourage better coordination between institutions of higher education and industry, and to provide sufficient space for start-ups and students’ internship programmes.
Industries department sources said the interest generated by the programme across the State was similar to that of Ernakulam as the departments of Industries and Higher Education are jointly working out the modality to operationalise the programme. It is expected that the Department of Higher Education will come out with a draft, which will trigger wider discussions to finally roll out the programme.
Sources said many educational institutions had sufficient space for the ‘industry on campus’ programme. How to utilise the available space will also depend on the higher education requirement as specified by the departments concerned. It is also expected that it will be possible to speed up the commercialisation of products developed in these industrial spaces through the programme, said the order issued by the government for the Campus Industrial Park Scheme 2024. The order also made it clear that the industrial parks set up thus should be campus-friendly.
Educational institutions owning a minimum of five acres can develop industrial parks and those having a minimum of two acres can develop standard design factories. It has also been prescribed that the activities in the industrial parks should be linked to trades, branches, and core subjects dealt within the institutions to a feasible extent. Genrobotics, a pioneer in robotics, had recently launched the State’s first industrial park on campus at Ilahia College of Engineering and Technology, Muvattupuzha. The initiative has the support of the government but is not in the ambit of the programme that the government is working on now, sources said.
