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July 1-15, 1999 My CT Almanac Column |
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IT TRAINING A Vision For The Task Force In the euphoria over privatisation, it is often forgotten that by far the best engineering institutions are in the state sector. There is no private institution in the country that can compete with IITs and the IISc for public acclaim. P.V. Indiresan
Traditionally, under the gurukul system, education was controlled by teachers. With the advent of the British system, that control was taken over by the state. In recent years, private industry has been dominating education, or more accurately, training. There is a question which system is the best. When education becomes commercial, only those who can afford to pay benefit and that too only when they live in cities. Such discrimination will persist unless education is treated as a service rather than as a business. That leads to the classical conflict between social equity and economic capability. As a palliative, it has been suggested that loan schemes should be introduced to help needy students. Such schemes are meaningful if, and only if, there is a guarantee of adequately paid employment, where employers guarantee recruitment after successful completion. That needs reliable manpower forecasts. As forecasts are notoriously unreliable, a self-regulating system needs to be devised to match the numbers produced to the numbers actually needed by the economy. One possibility is to link admissions to the number of previous year's graduates who obtained employment appropriate to their qualification. For instance, suppose employment with a remuneration of Rs 5,000 per month is considered appropriate for a particular course. Further, suppose 24 students of the previous year's batch secured such or better employment. Then, the number admitted may be set at a basic figure of 24 and adjusted for expected growth and dropouts. Alternately, commercial institutions may be asked to repay fees for all those students who could not secure such employment even after a year. Private vs State There is a danger that private investment will underplay quality education and restrict itself to the highly profitable training field. During World War II, youngsters taken directly from schools were trained to operate and maintain equipment like radars. It was then argued that conventional university courses are probably redundant, and a few weeks of training would do as well as a protracted university course. That illusion was shattered when new models of radars were introduced. Each time new models were introduced, the technicians had to be retrained but university educated engineers could handle the change on their own. Also, only college graduates could contribute to new designs and development. Like in Britain during war years, in India at the present time, there is a false optimism that technical training will suffice to maintain the IT revolution. Instead, India can meet future international competition only when it invests much more time and money in university education. In the euphoria over privatisation, it is often forgotten that by far the best (and the most reputed) engineering institutions are in the state sector. There is no private institution in the country that can compete with IITs and the IISc for prestige and public acclaim. Therefore, state-run institutions can be good, even outstanding. Where they fail, that happens because they are poorly funded, and enjoy little autonomy. It is a basic principle that whenever state institutions enjoy autonomy, as in the case of the IITs, they perform well; where they do not have autonomy, they fare poorly. Hence, instead of condemning government institutions (as many people do these days), they should all be given as much academic, administrative and financial autonomy as IITs are enjoying already. The current practice is to conduct entrance examinations wherever the demand exceeds the places available. These tests have become trainable. Those who can afford to do so, attend coaching institutions manage to enter while more competent but poorer students fail. Studies indicate that these tests are not reliable indicators of student's future performance. Hence, the system of admission through entrance tests needs major reform. As matters stand, higher education has been dubbed a "non-merit" good by the government and therefore receives stepmotherly treatment. That places an onerous responsibility on private support to higher education. Therefore, a marriage of assets built up by the state in the form of land and buildings, with private enterprise is the most economical way of expanding IT education. The government should place its investment in land and buildings at the disposal of private enterprise and facilities. Modern education, particularly in IT, is in a constant state of flux and needs to be up dated constantly, perhaps even from semester to semester. That requires feedback from industry. At the same time, only academic freedom and peer pressure will provide proper direction to research. Thus, we should envision education in IT as a co-operative effort between government, industry and academia, each performing what it can do best and operate with mutual confidence and respect. The writer if former director of IIT, Chennai |
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Into blinding darkness
enter those who take the path of ignorance; into greater darkness enter those who seek
learning - Isha Upanishad The IT-Task Force set up by the Prime Minister has set a target
of $50 billion in IT software exports by the year 2008. Adding hardware exports and local
consumption, it is safe to estimate that the total size of IT industry in year 2008 should
touch $100 billion to meet the wishes of the IT-Task Force. That will need a Compounded
Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of about 40 percent, a figure that has been regularly exceeded
by the Indian IT industry for several years. Therefore, though the targets set may appear
ambitious, they are merely an extrapolation of existing trends. However, the past is not
necessarily a dependable guide for the future; indeed, the practices of the past may not
sustain in the future the CAGR that India has maintained of late. 
Currently, the
productivity in IT industry is estimated to be less than $10,000 dollar a year per person.
At that rate, 10 million IT professionals will be needed to produce $100 billion worth of
output. The country should then train one million new hands every year. It is doubtful
whether that is feasible. Even if that were possible that may not be of much use because
most of those trained have low-level skills only. It is most unlikely that persons of such
limited skills can sustain the required CAGR. 
