Computers Today, May 16-31, 1999, Master File; pg 2

In the rat race of one-upmanship, how many centres an institute has matters a lot. While TULEC or CMC speak in terms of one or two
hundred centres, IEC and Lakhotia Computer Centre boast of more than 500 franchises each. Of the top two T-schools, NIIT mentions about 800 centres, but Aptech officials seem to be at loss when asked, "It's more than 1,000..."

Even though over 5,000 private training institutes across India churn out millions of "infotech specialists" and "computer programmers" every year, the recruiting software firms, unfortunately, prefer M.Tech/B.Tech, B.E/M.E, B.Sc/M.Sc or MCA/DCAs. Some spoilsport surveys point out that even 2 percent of the private T-school products don't get placement in IT firms. To solve the problem, T-schools are taking a three-prong initiative: calling courses "graduate-like", as only universities are allowed to confer "Graduate/Master" degrees; offering degrees from foreign universities; and, in collaboration with IITs offer "MCA-like" courses.

Learning at Gurukul

What does the word Gurukul bring to your mind? A tradition of old teaching methodology, a guru-shishya formal interaction, open-air classroom and handwritten notes on leaflets possibly. The Delhi-based ISG Software (P) Ltd has rolled out the concept of a "Software Gurukul" wherein the core focus is on fundamentals, concepts and practical sessions along with ethical, moral and spiritual values.The four-week full-time course aims at imparting training in Disciplined Software Engineering (DSE) and Professional Software Practices (PSPs). New wine in an old bottle?

What if you cannot visit US and do a course in an institute spending dollars, many of them have opened shop in India. Sometimes in collaboration with local partners (like Quantum Institute that has a tie-up with University of Illinois or Aptech which collaborated with six foreign educational bodies), and more often directly, the foreign firms are offering "similar courses at a fraction of the original cost" to Indian students. Even though the "fraction" turns out to be a whopping Rs 1 lakh, and Indian firms are weary of recruiting the products of B-grade foreign Universities, for some the lure appears irresistible.

The ongoing riddle in the private training industry: which course costs the most? NIIT's GNIIT course at Rs 60,000 is not the costliest. A SAP ERP course from SAP Institute costs about Rs 1.2 lakh, but is still nowhere near the upstart COM Competence Centre's COM programming course, for which one has to shell out nearly Rs 2 lakh. The lure: a sure seat on a US-bound aeroplane at the end of the 6-month course. But, if you don't enrol today, the charges are bound to go up "next Monday", it's warned.

Bombay to Boston, Madras to Massachusetts in six months" screams the ad of a training institute. Or "Did you know there are NIITians in GE or Boeing?". As you read in newspapers and magazines about the growing demand for software programmers in the West, and the increasing revenues from software exports (mainly bodyshopping) in India, you tend to believe these institutes. Insiders said, some institutes are even planning to offer visa processing services free with some courses.

If training is business and courses are products, one needs a high sales pitch. While public relations and corporate communication cells of T-schools are always on the overdrive, newspapers and magazines carrying multiple ads from each everyday, it isn't strange seeing even famous persons endorsing the courses. While NIIT roped in chess grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand to recommend its courses, its close rival is speaking to cinestar Shahrukh Khan, it's learnt.

Buzzwords sell most in the computer training industry. A course or module on E-commerce, data warehousing, knowledge management or streaming audio/video is sought-after, as is a special course on latest product syntax like Visual Basic, Visual J++, COM or Java 2. That's interesting, since many of these concepts or packages haven't reached Indian shores as yet. Concept training like database management, object-oriented programming or structural analysis is "formal sector stuff", kept aside for Universities.

Doing the highest-cost omnibus course from one of the top T-schools isn't enough; are you Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, or SAP certified? Though none of these giants is known to have recruited any MCSE, CNE or SAPIENT from India so far, hundreds are daydreaming of working in Redmond or Provo. The user firms also prefer people with expertise about the package being implemented, platforms being worked on or applications being developed. As the certification courses are universal and can be done even over the Net at one's own pace and time, their popularity is zooming.

No T-school claims 99 percent placement, 100 percent is the norm. The institute even promises a more-than-handsome starting salary for the student. But as we know that only a small fraction of the T-school products make into the software development companies or the IS set-up of user companies, where do these thousands of students land up? While the placement never touches 100 percent, most incumbents end up as sales reps or as low-level programmers in small companies. Of the advertised salary, someone got it sometime, it is told. "How can everyone expect it?"