With the goal of offering courses created in collaboration with business partners, Union Minister of Education, Skill Development, and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan launched the “SWAYAM Plus” platform on February 27, 2024. These programs, which have been developed in partnership with major players in the market like L&T, Microsoft, and Cisco, are centered on professional development and employability.

Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said during the inaugural ceremony that the National Education Policy’s (NEP) goal is being achieved with great success. Leading corporate enterprises will open their academies for the first time in partnership with the UGC, renowned academic departments, and exclusive universities like IIT Madras. These courses will all receive accreditation. Additionally, he said that the platform will increase the reach of the classroom by integrating 43 million higher education students and working professionals.

IIT Madras, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, will oversee the “SWAYAM Plus” platform. One of the first universities to launch Swayam-NPTEL and the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform was IIT Madras. MOOC and Swayam-NPTEL provide learning opportunities for students. SWAYAM now has the highest enrolment base, up from 31 lakh in 2017 to over 72 lakh by the end of 2023, according to a statement from IIT Madras.

SWAYAM Plus was introduced with the intention of making college students and those who are interested in lifetime learning more employable. This program combines the academic quality of SWAYAM’s educational platform with the real-world experience and current relevance offered by industry partners through a partnership between academia and industry. Features like credit recognition, an AI-powered chatbot for student support, and multilingual material are all included in the SWAYAM Plus platform.