2.3 mn students required in IT industry by 2010

Mangalore, July 13: Director of Education Initiative NASSCOM Sandhya Chintala said there was great demand for engineering students and 2.3 million engineering students would be required in both IT and IT enable sector industries by 2010.

Addressing at the valedictory function of Finishing School-2007 for engineering students yesterday, conducted as a pilot programme at National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) at Suratkal near here under NASSCOM for a period of eight week she said, the country during the last 15 years could produce only 1.6 millions engineering graduates. We need to produce another about 0.8 million engineers in another three years time to meet the demand, she added.

She said the national average put together from all NITs and IITs in engineering section remained at only 25 per cent to 30 per cent while in the non-engineering section it was only about 15 per cent to 18 per cent.

In this view, India with the advantage of young population strength had great potential in outsourcing our talents in worldwide IT sector.

Eight institutions IIT Roorkee and seven NITs at Calicut, Durgapur, Kurukshetra, Jaipur, Suratkal, Trichy and Warangal were conducting the programmes on a pilot basis with the twin objectives of empowering young engineering graduates by capacity building, through appropriate training.

Department of Computer Engineering of NITK and Coordinator of Finishing School HOD Vinay Kumar said, as part of the programme the students were given feedback on their performance and a final examination was also conducted.

The students would also have the opportunity to do the NAC-Tech (NASSCOM Assessment of Competence-Tech), a benchmark test, he said, adding that after the successful completion of the programme placement efforts would also be made by the NASSCOM, NITK and other interested agencies.

UNI