Educating Indian Youth for IT Careers

A new government, a new education movement in the country, and signs of
revival in global economiesit wont be long before the old refrain of the war
for talent starts all over again! The ICT industry itself will need close to
2,50,000 professionals every year to sustain and accelerate its growth. With
normal acceptance standards, this would call for a minimum of 6,00,000 students
to be trained each year, and possibly another 1,00,000 to go through reskilling
from different vocations. Add to that the need for providing advanced skills
every year to at least 1 mn professionals, currently employed in the industry,
and it is evident that nearly 2 mn trainees will have to go through skill
development processes every year.

There are good models that are worth emulating all over the world. Community
college system in the US, which enables continuing education and the opportunity
to pick up relevant skills, has deteriorated through the years, through
inadequate focus on quality, but is still one initiative that could work in many
parts of the country. The German dual system of education, which engages the
corporate sector industry associations and young aspiring job seekers and
provides internships for students in the system, is a system which has succeeded
in controlling unemployment levels in the country and is now aspiring to be the
model for the future for the European Union.

The alternative is the Chinese way, where hundreds of new universities are
being opened every year with strong support from the Communist party as well as
the provincial government to convert millions of aspirants to world class
professionals. While this scale of investment may be neither feasible nor
appropriate for India and other parts of Asia and Africa, the involvement of the
private sector in a more formal manner, and the opening up of higher education
to high quality foreign universities prepared to invest in significant campuses
and educational facilities may enable more capacity building in all
participating countries and states.

A future model of resource creation for the ICT industry in India and every
emerging nation may well be on the lines of the following four-part model:

1. Talent assessment of all young people in their early teens followed by
   awareness on possible career options that are in line with their aptitude.
   This could be provided by government funded agencies like the Maharashtra and
   Rajasthan Knowledge Corporations.
2. Employability skills should be imparted in all universities and colleges,
   so that the conceptual education provided in engineering, liberal arts and
   sciences, and other formal university programs with continually updated
   content is relevant to the needs of the corporate sector.
3. Employment training, aimed at graduates from the relevant and other
   disciplines should be conducted full time at centres near the employment zones
   and should be fully supported by the corporate sector. These would serve as
   finishing schools which may become unnecessary in the medium term once the
   employability movement takes firm root in the educational processes of the
   country.
4. Functional and technical update programs must provide advanced technical
   and management skills to industry professionals on a just in time rather
   than just in case basis, and prepares them to assume higher responsibilities
   in the industry.

There is a lot to be done in India to enable a model like this to be
conceptualized and implemented, but early realization and robust design of the
new model can ensure that the country begins to see the benefits in a few years.
The corporate sector can play a major role by extending a helping hand to
academia through the provision of industry projects and faculty development
programs.

The days of everybody blaming somebody and nobody making the effort to
collaborate are hopefully over, and the new season of hope for the industry can
and should result in a determined effort to increase the skills pool in our
country!

Ganesh natarajan

The author is Vice Chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies. He can be reached
at maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in