Opinion - Editorials   

Going beyond the curriculum

The Indian information technology and business process outsourcing industries have been witnessing a galloping growth of 25 per cent a year and they boast a $17.2 billion export revenue for 2004-05. The National Association of Software Service Companies (NASSCOM), the apex body of the IT industry, expects exports to go up to $22.3 billion, or by 30 per cent, in the current financial year. A large and talented workforce and the relatively low wages have enabled the country to corner a sizable share of a booming global IT and related services business. India accounts for 28 per cent of the combined talent pool of 28 low-cost countries. But demand appears to far outstrip the supply of quality workforce if the latest report from NASSCOM is anything to go by. The report has brought to light the plight of the industry — only 25 per cent of technical graduates and 10-15 per cent of general graduates have been found suitable for employment in offshore IT and BPO sectors. The shortfall in employable workforce by 2010 is expected to be half-a-million against a requirement of 2.3 million and this is a cause for concern. With other countries fast catching up, India cannot retain its global dominance or IT continue to be a major driver of economic growth in the coming years unless this issue of manpower is addressed in the near term.

Even as the curriculum is being tailored to equip students with hard skills of a reasonably high calibre, there is a dearth of quality teachers in many private engineering colleges. While students graduating from top institutions with a good faculty are adequately equipped to take up employment straightway, it is not the case with students passing out of many private engineering colleges. More than hard skills, it is the soft skills that these are often found lacking — communication skills, ability to articulate ideas, and ability to work as a team and build relationships. The lack of soft skills comes to the fore when working on outsourcing projects. The in-house training provided by many companies is often tailor-made to meet hard skill requirements; identifying and teaching soft skills take a longer time. Academic institutions have an important role to play here. Simple measures such as making students work as a team on projects and imparting acceptable communications and other soft skills will go a long way. With workplaces getting globalised fast, acquiring such soft skills will help students to become employable across industries anywhere. Ideally such initiatives should start in schools. Academia-industry collaboration can help students acquire hard as well as soft skills. The time has come for the rash of companies that surfaced in the 1980s and 1990s to see this as an opportunity to reinvent themselves and focus on imparting the skills needed to make the graduates employable.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Storm clouds over budget session
Going beyond the curriculum
Washington's ever-shifting goalpost
"India must speak up on human rights and rule of law"
America's plan is to force GM food on the world
Divisive move
Fighting leprosy
Stirring moment
For a rupee
On Valentine's Day

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu