Divakara K. Udupa, E-mail: [email protected]
One has a B. Sc. in computer science from a good college; blows up more than Rs. 30,000 learning programming from a reputed IT coaching institute; and still cannot copy correctly ten lines of code from a book! What can we say about this IT education? Though one should not generalise and draw conclusions from such cases, it is also an indicator of the current state of affairs of IT education!
Sometime back, lots of people went gaga over medical transcription. There were seminars, articles, advertisements, and coaching classes. In my own town, I was baffled to see large banners on medical transcription classes. I started wondering - at least one-fourth of the US population has to be turned into doctors to give jobs to students being churned out from these medical transcription classes! Now, it will be interesting to take a survey on the number of people trained and the number currently employed. You can notice similar hypes on a lot of IT related courses, which suck a large number of gullible and eager students. Let us be clear: not all IT courses being offered are useless.
Major puzzle for IT students on selecting the courses is due to the lack of knowledge of the IT industry in general and software development process in particular. IT industry is a highly professional and competitive industry managed by highly educated and competent professionals. IT industry works on timely and low cost delivery of good quality products, especially, when an IT company takes work on contracts.
Though IT industry has plenty of opportunities in areas other than software, goal of most of the IT students is to take up jobs in the software related areas. Broadly, software jobs are in areas such as technical support, maintenance, testing, programming, managing projects and other software related specialties.
A software project can range in size from a few thousand lines of code to millions of lines of code. Though the lines of code are not the real indicators of a software project, bean counters (managers, accountants and so on) use it for tracking expenses, schedules, and quality. The logic involved in software projects can be from simple to highly complex, which require a very good understanding of data structures, algorithms, programming languages, software development, product requirements, communication skills, and so on. In any software project, software complexity has to be considered along with the lines of code for evaluation purposes. Software is still considered by many as an art!
Only, professionals with a thorough knowledge of a product line and those experienced in software development are employed in new projects. The execution of a software project requires total teamwork. However, large software projects tend to overrun cost, miss schedules, and have always the risk of being scrapped.
Then there is the maintenance, testing and upgrade of software projects. Usually, new entrants in the software field are placed in the maintenance and testing. This gives them an opportunity to understand the logic of a product. The new releases of software products or upgrades of earlier releases, require a thorough knowledge of the product line. Here also, a slight mistake while modifying a code has ripple effect and can cause major damages. So these are permitted only after thorough peer reviews. A good number of our IT companies are offloaded maintenance, testing and upgrades of projects instead of totally new projects. Hardware projects requiring software work are still more complex. It requires both electronics and communications/electrical engineering and software background.
When this is the overall scenario, where do the mass army of IT students coming out of the “reputed” coaching institutes fit in? Only about 50 percent are suitable for software related work. We should be gratified that the remaining have become computer literates to different degrees. This is the reality!
What are the problems facing IT education? The major bottleneck is the shortage of good IT teachers. Also, many institutes lack proper facilities. As it is politically correct to chant the IT mantra, everyone is talking of IT. Besides, the quality of graduates from different institutions varies. Here mark-cards are literally of no use and value as there is no uniformity in evaluation. So, normally most of the IT companies screen candidates by taking written tests. In some cases, IT companies ask for experience with a track record of results delivered.
It is essential to look into e-commerce, as it is being touted as an area with great promise and opportunities. As per this year’s August report of National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the domestic market for e-solutions is expected to grow from $65 million in 2000 to $500 million by 2005. It also estimates one billion dollar worth of business for e-solution products. Because of low Internet penetration, the scope for business-to-consumer (B2C) is quite small compared to business-to-business (B2B) opportunities. Despite these impressive projections and estimates, we have to be skeptical of the job opportunities in the e-commerce area.
Globally, e-commerce has a great potential. There will be a higher growth in the Internet related sales for the next few years as compared to the brick-and-mortar companies. If the e-commerce is able to expand its reach to the uncharted and unexplored markets around the globe, we can imagine the growth potential in this area.
Still, our e-commerce growth will be quite slow because of the trust, security, and payment issues. Besides, the Internet costs and reliability of the Internet networks are major deterrents to the explosive growth of e-commerce. So, where do students who have taken e-commerce I and e-commerce II fit in? Not in many places except that they are ready for e-commerce III, though rates will be far higher than the other courses!
There is absolutely no point in grumbling: sir, I am from a middle class family, how can I take continuously a costly stream of courses? The IT students should not just randomly take the courses selected by the course counselors of the IT institutes. Also, while taking any course, it is very important to understand the basic principles involved.
So, before taking any course, consider the different factors such as the time and money spent on a course, its utility from the employment angle, the qualifications of the faculty and the facilities in the institutes. Hence, it is necessary to do some research and talk to people who are in the field. Also, remember that the “steaming and hot” IT courses become “frigid” in no time. Ultimately, take courses very selectively. Unless an IT student has clear-cut objectives, he or she can continue to blow up money for a long-time to come! However, this is good news to our IT institutes - very good, good, and bad!