Why short-term courses are gaining popularity

Srinivasa Rao Dasari / Hyderabad

South India hires almost 50 percent of the IT professionals in the country. The training scenario in the region reflects an interesting trend of the popularity of short-term courses, which most IT professionals continue to do for skill upgradation. The state of Andhra Pradesh is a case in point where a growing number of IT professionals keep coming after working on project-specific contracts, mostly in countries like Singapore and Malaysia. They do short-term courses for which they pay much less than what they would have to pay overseas.

“I spent about two years in Singapore working on VB projects. Since my contract is over, I came back to Hyderabad and have joined the .Net course here. After completing it, I need to try again in the overseas job market. In Hyderabad the cost of short-term courses is more than five times lower when compared with institutes in Singapore. While doing projects in Singapore, it was not possible to upgrade my skills. Hence I had no option but to return to my hometown,” says IT professional Gopi Krishna Dubasi. He is one of the many returnees who are taking advantage of the comparatively low-cost courses in India.

Courses in demand

The last one year has witnessed an interesting trend of short-term courses getting popular. Most computer training institutes are offering courses covering ERP, SCM, CRM, Java tools, e-commerce. This is apart from the training provided in hardware engineering, RDBMS courses and training in IT enabled Services (ITeS). As per a study by Nasscom, the professionals in demand include software analysts, domain specialists, information security professionals, integration specialists, database administrators, networking specialists, and data warehousing, semiconductor design and communication engineers.

“We see a good demand for courses like Oracle, Java, testing tools, and ERP, particularly with the latest versions coming out...we are able to retain a major portion of our old students. Those who worked overseas also prefer to do short-term courses in Hyderabad,” says Mahesh of the Hyderabad-based Orbit Institute.

Mainframe professionals are again in demand, and so are the courses to upgrade their skills such as CICS, DB2, Systems Software, Application Software, IMS, Operating System Mana-gement, Cobol, MQ Series and Websphere. The market is growing in terms of revamping the older mainframes and adding new features and software. Also, the new mainframes are smaller, cheaper, more powerful and e-business ready, so the market is growing steadily. “This is because there are an increasing number of maintenance projects on mainframes only. Many Hyderabad-based companies are getting a large number of mainframe maintenance projects, hence the demand for mainframes professionals. The duration of maintenance projects is also for a longer period ranging from two to five years. The future is also promising for mainframe professionals since it is very expensive to shift from mainframes to other latest platforms,” says the spokesman of Keane India.

The training needs are significantly project-based and software companies coordinate with the training provider to formulate the precise curriculum. The only hitch in this case is that it leads to ‘restricted training’ as they learn little outside the purview of the project they are engaged in. The fact that organisations worldwide have started focusing on disaster recovery and planning has added to the demand for these professionals. Greater opportunities await them outside India.

Job-based training

Recognising the immense job potential in the IT industry, university colleges have introduced computer education at the degree and post-graduation levels. The number of academic institutions such as engineering and polytechnic that offer a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Applications (MCA and BCA) and other IT-related subjects has gone up in Andhra Pradesh. The state has a large pool of talent with 350,000 students graduating every year, and more than 100 engineering colleges in the state producing as many as 65,000 engineers per annum. About 13,000 MCAs and 18,000 diploma holders are coming out from these colleges every year.

As part of the promotion of the IT industry in the state, the government of Andhra Pradesh took the initiative to set up the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in association with the private sector. With the aim to provide industry-specific short-term courses, IT majors like Microsoft, IBM and Keane had set up their schools in IIIT. However, after setting up their own campuses in Cyberabad, almost all these companies have shifted these schools from IIIT to their own premises.

The AP government has set up a committee with representatives from the universities and the private sector to coordinate the efforts of both the sectors towards promotion of quality IT training.

One of the solutions suggested by the committee envisages the provision of IT education in engineering and other colleges by private training institutes, thereby leveraging the best of both the sectors. The students can benefit from the updated syllabus provided by the private sector with the formal education and recognition of the university.

Distance education

Many universities have integrated their courses with the latest technology developments in the IT sector to suit the specific manpower needs of the industry; they have also introduced online courses. The average age of the Indian software professional is 27.5 years, and there is tremendous demand for short-term IT courses for faster career progression.

Moreover, skills upgradation is also resulting in a hike in salary levels. The salary for IT professionals saw an 8 percent increase (basic salary) in 2002, and is now almost 13 percent. Many companies are adopting variable pay concept to link pay to revenues and control costs.

The importance of distance education has started to pick up in Andhra Pradesh and electronic classrooms will be set up at several locations across the state to generate a high number of IT professionals. Recently, Osma-nia University, Andhra Unive-rsity and Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in association with the Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburg, US, announced the launch of a Master of Science Degree in Information Technology (MS IT) programme. This two-year programme is a self-paced distance learning course ending with a multi-university post-graduate degree. The programme aims at producing around 10,000 high-end IT professionals annually by 2005. Even private training institutes have set up portals to provide e-learning facilities to their students.

Software training is undergoing a radical change in terms of course content and teaching practices in tune with emerging IT technologies and services. Moreover, the requirement of domain knowledge has become a major area in order to meet the needs of different industry verticals.