Indian IT wobble exposes education problems
Engineering courses are the most sought- after of undergraduate studies in India. Engineering colleges in the country churn out millions of graduates every year but according to the corporate world these graduates lack the necessary skills required for the job market.
An Aspiring Minds National Employability Report based on a study of more than 150,000 engineering graduates passing out in 2015 from approximately 650 colleges in India concluded that 80 percent of them are unemployable.
This fact was again reiterated by Housing Development Finance Corporation ( HDFC) Chairman Deepak Parekh earlier this month.
An American student, Thane Richard, spent seven months in 2007 as part of a “study abroad” program offered by his US institute, Brown University, according to a guest post on kafila. org. Richard during this time was a student at St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi. This institute is considered one of the best colleges in India regarding Liberal Arts Studies.
Richard said that most of his fellow Indian students at St. Stephen’s wanted to pursue their second undergraduate degree at foreign universi- ties as they didn’t find the academic atmosphere at St. Stephen’s stimulating enough. He stated that classes were characterized by professors just dictating notes and students copying them down without any discussions.
In a Political Science class, the only requirement was to submit two papers of 2,500 words. Richard mentioned that he wrote more intense papers during his American high school days.
The emphasis at St. Stephen’s according to him was on rote memorization and conformity. Richard concluded that from an academic angle his entire study abroad experience in India was a major disappointment.
India’s IT industry has covered the deep flaws in Indian higher education for many years. The Indian IT industry rose to prominence during the late 1990s.
The US tech industry couldn’t easily satisfy the demand for computer programmers during this period. Their search for cheap coders led US firms to India. Indian IT firms like Infosys, Wipro and TCS booked billions in business from US companies seeking to fix their “Y2K” woes – 20th- century software represented a four- digit year with only the final two digits, thereby making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. This pioneered a big trend. US companies began outsourcing their ITrelated work to India. Business processing outsourcing ( BPO) centers and call centers mushroomed in India and the IT industry boomed. The majority of graduates found jobs in BPOs and call centers. These firms imparted training to the fresh entrants in order to brush up their customer care, language and technical skills because the education provided to them in their colleges was inadequate. The BPO industry in India played the leading role in retraining the largely unemployable graduates from engineering or humanities courses at their company premises and providing them with job placements. But automation is currently threatening the lower- end software services and outsourcing jobs. The $ 150 billion industry employing more than 3.5 million people in India is jittery as a result. Summing up the mood at the three day NASSCOM ( National Association of Software and Service Companies) leadership event in Mumbai in February 2017, Cognizant Chief Strategy Officer Malcolm Frank stated that even the top IT executives were “fearing the machines.” Automation coupled with the strict stance of US President Donald Trump on H1- B visas has made the Indian IT industry highly nervous. NASSCOM delayed its initial growth forecast for 2017- 18 by three months to give itself time to gauge policy announcements in the US, as immigration rules could yet become even tougher. There are high chances of mass retrenchments in the Indian IT industry along with a freeze on fresh recruitment. The future of numerous IT employees along with millions of fresh graduates passing out of Indian colleges appears bleak.
There are high chances of mass retrenchments in the Indian IT industry along with a freeze on fresh recruitment. The future of numerous IT employees along with millions of fresh graduates passing out of Indian colleges appears bleak.