IT sector to get abundant "employable" talent with proposed curriculum

Rather than lament over the lack of "employable" talent, the Indian IT industry may soon be in a position to hire thousands of "employable" engineering graduates in the country. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), along with software body Nasscom and IT industry experts, is understood to have approved in-principle a new curriculum framework at the under-graduate level which is expected to address all the theoretical and practical requirements of the industry.

 

The framework, for instance, will attach importance to understanding of the context besides plain theory. It is also expected to emphasise improvements in the problem-solving abilities of engineering students across disciplines. The Council, which is the apex body responsible for the development of technical education system in the country, has also proposed to introduce a credit system for all the eight semesters. Besides, weightage will be given, based on the requirement of the IT industry in the core, elective and basic sciences subjects.

 

The AICTE will hold a meeting of the vice chancellors (VCs) of all the technical universities across the country in September this year to discuss in detail these changes which have been introduced in the model framework. Following this, the new curriculum will be circulated to all the VCs to be implemented in a phased manner, according to a highly-placed source in AICTE.However, the exact date for the rolling out of the new curriculum is yet to be decided.

 

Sources close to the development said that the new curriculum framework has been prepared in close collaboration with Nasscom and the IT industry. The AICTE had held two meetings with the representatives of the Indian IT companies in Mysore and Bangalore earlier. The proposals given by the IT industry were taken into consideration by the AICTE, while preparing the model curriculum.

 

"We have worked closely with AICTE to introduce a new curriculum. The new curriculum framework has been accepted by the AICTE. And some universities are looking at it and trying to work it out," said T V Mohandas Pai, Director, HRD, Education & Research, Infosys Technologies. "It places a lot of emphasis on principles and context apart from algorithm thinking, database management and problem-solving techniques. All these skills are required for the IT industry as well as the heavy engineering sector," Pai added.

 

Only one out of every four engineering passouts, it's estimated, is fit to be employed (referred to as "employable") in the IT industry. Moreover, even though the engineering colleges in Indian churn out over 400,000 graduates every year, Nasscom estimates a potential shortfall of 500,000 technology professionals by 2010. In this context, the revision of teh curriculum has been a long-standing demand of the IT industry.

 

Besides, the software industry is heavily dependant on campus recruitment, and IT companies -- on an average -- spend more than Rs 2 lakh per employee for training each candidate hired through campus recruitments. Satyam, for instance, spends 10 per cent of its total wage bill towards training of the new recruits. Bangalore-headquartered Infosys Technologies spends Rs 750 crore every year on educating and training its workforce.