IT units face staff shortage

The gap between the availability of trained 'faculty' for technical courses and the requirement is steadily increasing and is appearing as a constraint in producing technically equipped industry oriented students.

The only way out was ' edu sat' - where students can be taught by video conferences and remote Powerpoint presentations.

Pointing to the lack of industrial training and exposure Dr R Natarajan, chairman "" All India Council for Technical Education said, "Today's era calls for continuous industry oriented learning - now we see several short courses for middle management professionals coming up. We are also thinking of making provisions for inviting guest lecturer from industry on a regular basis for technical courses for providing the students a better understanding of the real scenario".

He was speaking at a seminar " CII -AICTE Technical Education Meet- Industry academe partnership for global challenges " organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Today in the era of globalisation when demand of technically equipped people are increasing sharply "" academe and industry cannot afford to stay unintegrated, said Satya Sadhan Chakraborty, minister of department of Higher Education, government of West Bengal.

" For mutual benefit and sustenance there should be more interaction and cooperation between the industry and universities "" one cannot remain on an isolated world", he added.

In recent past a number of institutes with technical and vocational courses has been established "" though the number is yet not adequate to meet the demand but the state is more concerned of the quality of teaching and syllabus rather than in numbers, confirmed the minister.

The total number of institutions approved in India up to 2003 - 04 for technical and vocational courses are around 5460 with a total intake of more than 5, 40, 000 students informed Ashok Mukherjee, chief manager - human resources, Tata Consultancy Services.

The minister confirmed the fact that West Bengal has been a late starter but the speed of change in higher-educational set up is more than satisfactory.