MADURAI: The Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) will soon have a Rs 15 crore entrepreneurship, innovation and career hub set up with funds under Phase II of the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksa Abhiyan scheme. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the same via videoconferencing from Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday. With this, several new skill-oriented programmes would be introduced at the university, according to officials.Speaking to TOI, vice-chancellor of MKU, M Krishnan said the entrepreneurship hub would attract several industries – from varied sectors – to the university. He added that many universities in other states had industries within their campuses, but Tamil Nadu lacked it for a long time. The hub would help address this. “Through this hub, industries would set up centres in the university and benefit students and research scholars from MKU and its affiliated colleges,” he said.Meanwhile, officials from MKU said that industries have already started approaching university to setup centres at the hub, sign memorandum of understandings (MoU) and introduce skill-oriented programmes aligned with the sector.“Even on Monday, a bioinformatics company from Bengaluru approached the university for a possible tie-up. As the industries come and sign MoUs, new programmes would be introduced,” the official said.Apart from this, the university would get additional funds of Rs 35 crore to improve the quality of innovation and research. The VC said that students would be asked to come up with more innovative research projects. “For a long time, publishing a paper was the end of a research, but hereafter we want it to be a beginning and encourage students to come up with start-ups. We want them to become job providers rather than be just job seekers,” he added.University sources said that it would take around one year for the hub to be completed.

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