International School Engineering, a private non-profit training institute, opened its first centre in Hyderabad recently. From this month, it would offer certificate courses for professional engineers in areas such as data analytics and product engineering, and also a two-year executive M Tech in association with Gitam University Hyderabad. Prof Jamie Carbonell of Carnegie Mellon University, who is one of ISE’s chief mentors, explains the rationale behind the institute in an interview with B Ramakrishna. Excerpts:
What is the idea behind starting ISE in India?
There are two ideas. One is that there is a large, trained pool of IT engineers and there is a need to improve their skillset from standard IT engineering to product design, analytics and integration. Second thing is that this need is recognised by some of the large companies. This creates a very favourable environment for us to try and see if the educational methods that we have been using in the US can be applied to people who are already professionals. If that can be successful in India, we will also try it in other parts of the world.
Is this the first such project for you outside the US?
Yes. In the US, we are running this programme for regular students primarily. We have several other master's programmes for professionals which are of longer duration.
Are you looking at a proper brick and mortar campus in India?
We are moving towards such a campus, which is under construction now in Hyderabad. In the meantime, it is being run out of Novotel hotel. If it is successful in brick and mortar, we will then also look at distance and virtual modes as the next step. Our strategy is to develop it on a small scale, establish the methods which can work well, and then if that meets success as expected, we will grow it.
What is ISE's relationship with Carnegie Mellon University?
Carnegie Mellon is providing some of the teaching material and expertise in assessment to make sure that the courses are sufficiently rigorous. It is also helping in terms of new teaching methodologies such as learning by doing that was pioneered there. The certificates will be issued by ISE. Students will have the option of getting a secondary certificate from Carnegie Mellon if they do some additional work as required by the university.
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If ISE is broadly looking at bridging the skills gap in India, could you tell us what type of skills and for which industry?
Right now, the ISE is starting with the skill level of somebody with a B Tech who has been in the industry for two to five years and wants to move up in responsibility, compensation and in excitement in the work that they do. So, we are looking at somebody who wants to move up from just writing software according to given specifications to somebody who gets to design, develop and integrate systems and operate at a higher level.
The Indian IT industry is more than a decade old now. Do you think they would not be able to reach the level you are describing, on their own?
I think they are moving in that direction. This is an accelerator. There is an insufficient supply of engineers of that higher level of skills. So what we are trying to do is, instead of creating new engineers, which is a very time-consuming process, we are upgrading the skills of existing engineers.
ISE aims to provide US university standard of education. What would that mean for students?
It would mean several things for students. The individual skills they need to have are relatively easy to acquire. Another set of skills is the ability to use different skills together. Say, one skill might be programming skill, another might be a performance measurement skill, another might be integration skill. Can they use those skills together to devise a new system or improve an existing one? Skill integration is something which is not taught as much in the educational programme here. You do acquire it with experience, but you acquire it slowly. We are trying to accelerate that process so that you acquire it over just a few months.
One more thing is the analytic skill. Analytic skill means the ability to analyse a system to find performance bottlenecks and to see if there are security holes that might permit some problems. This kind of analytic skills are taught somewhat in a typical course. But the combination of integration and analytic skills are of high value to the industry and are not present in sufficient numbers.
You must have reviewed Indian universities before deciding on setting up ISE here. How do you rate them?
Yes, but it’s not a question of rating them. It's a matter of determining the objectives of the Indian system. For example, many of the PhDs coming out are excellent but they are not necessarily attracted to [product engineering] kind of work. They are attracted to teaching in universities and R&D, and that's what they should be doing. Then there is a large number of B Tech, or even M Tech, who have very useful but narrow skills, and which provide much of the workforce. Between those two are what we call the professional engineers who have analytic skills but there are a lot fewer of them. So there is a demand that has not been met by supply. So standard economics says that you should increase the supply. That is the big opportunity that the ISE programme is directed at doing.
