Q) Audience would like to know more about Kompass Junior College and what do you have to say about it?
Thank you for all the nice words Catherine. You have already mentioned the experience that I have. That is something that led me to start Kompass about two years ago. Kompass is actually a different kind of Junior college and we focus only on Commerce. There are certain things that we ensure to do the right way for the student, which is in terms of career guidance led education. The reason for that is something that I draw from my experience during my corporate life, which is that I used to go to a lot of campuses for interviewing students to be hired for my organisation and I realised that once the students join the organisation they get disillusion very quickly and they start leaving the organisation within 6 months – 1 year. So as a part of the process of the exit interviews I used to sit down to understand “what went wrong?” that we could set right and more often than not, I understood that students actually have not really chosen a career based on understanding their natural abilities, their interests, their underlying strengths or skills. That is something that led me to start thinking about how I can guide the students?How can I help them to become employable and to do very well in their careers? That led me to do my work with various IITs, IIM’s, BITS Pilani and a host of these schools across the country. I also realised at the same time that a student who is at the UG or PG level is probably a little late in the education journey to have any kind of course correction. Why don’t we catch them young and bring in an intervention to set this thing right? So that’s how Kompass took birth and I realised that +2 is a very important stage of any student’s life, we are actually laying down the bedrock for the future career and education that comes subsequent to it. So these two years if we guide them, teach them and train them well they are almost guaranteed for success in all the metrics of the word that come along with career success. Kompass junior college focuses on alternate streams like Commerce, Humanitics and we prepare the students for the professional opportunities like Law, Business Management, it’s possible to get into Indian Institute of Management right after +2 and not many students and parents are aware about it, so we train the students for these competitive exams, we also trainthem on life skills because I believe that life skills are extremely crucial for any career that you are trying to build, we train them on communication, we train them on collaboration, entrepreneurial skills, today even if you don’t want to be an entrepreneur, they are something that are in demand by the industry. So as the industry is focusing more and more on skills, I think that the direction for any educational institution should be towards skill based education and Kompass is trying to do it in that direction.
Q) When was it started sir and how many students are there?
We are only two years young and we intend to stay young throughout by constantly learning and experimenting in terms of delivering high quality education to our students and focusing on holistic development. So we not only teach but we also bring in the elements through which learning can happen. We have interaction with guest speakers who bring in their expertise and knowledge and share that with the students. We also ensure that industry professionals are interacting with students, so that students can make informed choices and they can know about what kind of career growth prospects are there, what kind of salaries are there and what are the different fields within a particular stream which are available so that students can get an immersive experience of what a career should look like for them through these kind of elements of learning. We also ensure that our classrooms are designed to deliver high quality education, so our classrooms accommodate 30-35 students and we have personalised teaching for all the students. We ensure that we work on their strengths as well as areas of development at an individual level.
Q) I am quite curious about something, so what is the K in Kompass junior college?
Thanks, not many people ask me that question. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about the name of our institution. Compass as you would know is the instrument that helps you with the direction when you are lost, when we started out with Kompass, we realised that students are not taking the right approach in terms of building their career or in terms of taking the right decisions in choice of the streams, so we thought there should be a guiding light and compass is something that can help them set the right direction for them, so here is Kompass – Setting new directions for the students as well as in the domain of education.
Q) If Kompass junior college is helping students find new directions, then tell us what is your North star?
There is a little bit of philosophy around the north star. So, I come from a corporate experience, some people ask me why I quit a career which was kind of “lucrative” and came to education. So, I think sometimes success comes in different packages and for me today, what is very important is that to ensure that the next generation that is going to be beacon of hope for us, for the country and for the world needs to be well guided in terms of crafting some of my knowledge and expertise, with these young minds and set them onto the right paths. They do well, they are successful, then I think that’s something I am going to derive satisfaction from. So my north star is ensuring that we deliver the best from Kompass, in terms of academics, holistic development of the student and by regularly engaging the parents as a part of the ecosystem to ensure that the learning outcomes for the students are met. Thank you so much everyone for listening, it was a pleasure being with you today.
