Aswathy V
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The US slowdown has begun to cast a pall of gloom over
the Indian IT-education industry. Several courses, that were once attractive and
were considered as passports to lucrative careers, have suddenly lost their
sheen. Several institutes are also expecting a drop in the number of students
opting for their courses in the coming months.
Product specific courses will not serve the interests of the students in the
long run as they do not provide flexibility of skills, said N A P Thampy, the
Additional Director of Software Training and Development Center (STDC) of ER
&DCI-T.
With technology-specific courses more in demand for those hoping to gain
employment abroad, students trained in a particular software product such as
Visual Basic, HTML or Java are finding their skills insufficient to stay afloat
in this competitive milieu. With IBM mainframe professionals are in big demand
after a lull, many leading companies such as L&T and TCS are using
ER&DCI-T facilities for training, he added.
But the situation has also caused considerable anxiety among students who are
now moving into multimedia courses, what with mushrooming of TV channels,
program production and animation studios in the country, said Baiju Raj Rajan of
Pentasoft Technologies Ltd.
However, Thampy says there isn't much to worry as the demand for some courses
are cyclical and normally happens in accordance to the requirement of IT
professionals in industry. He cited this to the lack of proper planning at the
national level to ensure the correct proportion of fresh candidates to suit the
requirements of industry.
Moreover, there is no common yardstick to measure the standard of education
and the course fee at the institutes, said TVK Raman, who runs an authorized
training center of IBM. Some institutes charge Rs 60,000 for an e-commerce
course while a lesser-known institute may charge anywhere between Rs 25,000 to
Rs 30,000. As a result, the skill set acquired by students from various
institutes, are not uniform, he added.
However, most of the IT training institute heads, were unanimous in their
opinion that the slow down may lead to a drop in number of students enrolling
for the courses, if the meltdown continued unabated.
The Indian IT industry has targeted the US market and has generally ignored
the domestic market which is largely lying untapped. With more IT spending at
the governmental level and domestic firms increasing their spending on IT, there
may soon be a boost in demand for software professionals. Consequently
programmers with post-graduate diplomas will find it easier to spot job
opportunities, Thampy added.
A student learning an IT course should be able to find a job easily or to
start a venture on his own, according to K R Srivatsan, Director of Indian
Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K). Hence, the
emphasis of the post graduate diploma program in IIITM-K is on developing the
talent of a potential entrepreneur, he added.