Education, Careers & Professional News
The Learning Curve: IT Biggies Want A Customised Talent Pool
Industry-academic partnerships are pretty common in the United States. This bug has now caught on in India with leading software companies forging alliances with universities. Infosys, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, and others have already joined the bandwagon.
Infosys Technologies launched its Campus Connect initiative last year. Through partnership with educational institutions, the programme hopes to align the needs of engineering colleges, faculty and students with that of the industry. Says Dr Ravindra MP, vice-president, education and research, Infosys Technologies Ltd,
Indias human resource talent and higher education is receiving attention abroad. To maintain our competitive edge, it is imperative that we bridge the gap between industry expectations and academic content. Campus Connect aims at evolving a model through which engineering institutions and Infosys can partner for competitiveness.
Industry academic partnerships have worked pretty effectively in countries like the United States. Software companies in India are no longer looking at service delivery projects. They are now bagging contracts that have a research and delivery component. The companies in turn are looking to outsource the research component to academic institutions. Students come to know about industry trends. In short, its a win win for both, comments Ambarish Dasgupta, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
As part of a larger goal, companies are now looking at a HR model where a fresher can be put onto a project with minimal training. Agrees Himesh Misra, country manager, IBM Academic Initiative, Software Group, IBM India, All companies would like their new recruits to be productive from day one.
Adds Javed Tapia, director, Red Hat India, From the time a fresher joins an IT organisation, the aim is to make them billable. By recruiting trained and certified freshers, the organisation saves on training time.
Through its academic partnership, the Big Blue hopes to train over 75,000 students in IBM and open standards-based technologies by 2005.
The company is partnering with the Department of Management Studies and Department of Computer Sciences, IIT Delhi; The School of Information Technology, Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore , to name a few.
IBM is also working with the Visveswaraiah Technological University, Belgam, and will provide satellite education to 1,40,000 students across 120 colleges in Karnataka. As part of the initiative, IBM and VTU would utilise EDUSAT to train students on open standards and IBM Technologies. We aim to provide the right skills to the next generation IT workers, says Mr Misra.
Even though India has made its presence felt in the technology and services space, industry players reckon there is still a long way to go. The country is extremely under-invested in application of IT in education. This is disconcerting, especially since IT holds tremendous potential for redefining traditional classroom training and one that creates new learning opportunities in ways that are affordable and accessible for more individuals, irrespective of which side of the technology divide they are in, observes Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft India.
Microsofts educational objective is two-fold: accelerating IT literacy at one end and creating a talent pool of top-notch IT professionals.
Microsofts rival Red Hat is also in the education race. The company is trying to popularise Linux bottom up: by targeting schools and colleges. Last year, around 2,000 students registered for the Red Hat Scholarship programme. This has helped spread awareness of open source software in engineering institutions, says Javed Tapia, director, Red Hat India.
With the developed world facing skilled labour shortages, industry experts are of the view that India can exploit this potential. While American schools are turning out fewer engineers, Asian universities have more IT students. But they still cannot satisfy the accelerating demand for skills in rapidly evolving technology markets, points out Mr Misra of IBM.
Consider the figures: There are nearly 2,50,000 students graduating from Indian universities every year. But if India has to achieve an annual revenue of $70-80 billion in software and service by 2008, it would need to educate at least 2 million knowledge workers during the period