Is there a need for the Govt. (A.P. precisely) to re-strategize its higher education and employment policies?

Few days back while I was reading the paper, a news article about “No takers for IT SEZ, Govt. not favorable to allocate the space to other domain companies…” caught my attention instantly. Then I thought why the govt. is still hanging around to the decades old strategy of employment by the then govt.?

Another day I saw some other news “No takers for the traditional sciences/courses at colleges”. Then again I cursed the govt. for pushing the students away from the basic sciences, arts and other courses which are very much needed in every field and walk of life. This has happened because of the Govt. strategy of promoting only the engineering field and more specifically IT courses for few years now, as this field has created a huge pool of employment. Certainly then the reason for the promotion seems to be out rightly correct. But, is it really a right approach? Let’s dig deeper into it.

Very recently I saw some other news which was stating that around 1.6 lakh attended the engineering counseling from 3 lakh plus eligible candidates, where as last year almost every eligible student attended the counseling. Adding to it, only very few dared to take CSE/IT and many seats are left vacant. Seeing this, I was left so confused, if students are not getting into traditional courses and they are also not getting into engineering (precisely IT)? Then which other courses are they getting into? May be they are even more confused than I am, as for years taking a traditional arts/science was seen as degradable and a complete NO for a bright student and the IT which has provided the highest employment to almost all the engineering graduates, has back fired from past 1 yr.

Who is responsible for the present situation? The students and their parents are clueless of what field they can trade into. The way I see it’s majorly the ill efficiency of the Govt. agencies coupled with the wrong social outlook by each one of us.

Though, the govt. needs to be appreciated for its quick grasp of the then newly emerging IT field and using it efficiently to create wealth and employment but anything overdone is hazardous, which is what has really happened in A.P. now. Though the govt. can very easily wash away its hands by putting the blame on the present Global recession, but the fact remains is; this was going to happen with or without the recession may be the recession has pushed it a bit earlier. I always get surprised, that no politician or official talks about the govt. functioning towards the higher education and relevant employment. Most of the times they talk about very straight topics; the likes of agriculture, farmers where they don’t really have to put much of thinking and only needs to follow the set guidelines and even there they messes up hugely and keep discussing on it and side tracking the other major issues.

If, I have to cite a similar example; Detroit was considered as automobile hub earlier to the recession due to the presence of GM and Ford, the automobile veterans. Based on that, the govt. there (Michigan) should have promoted only mechanical and automobile education as they can get employment easily; but I am sure they haven’t. And why does our Govt. in AP always promote only IT and very few other sectors as a basis of employment for the educated youth?

The other reason for the present situation is the social pressure that an individual goes through. We in our society start glorifying and idolizing certain things over the above. Like for past few years Software Professionals were glorified and made poster boys everywhere and now when the situation has changed very quickly they are being asked, is your job secure, does your company started firing. Since the IT was promising along with huge pay checks till few years ago, everyone was being encouraged to get into it even though he might have not been interested in that work. The students were pushed away from their interest in other sciences, course etc. and influenced to join engineering as the IT companies majorly preferred engineering graduates over the other courses and for these companies even the branch of engineering never mattered and so was to the students, as at the end they were sure of being employed by an IT company.

But, are they really doing justice of the engineering education they had imparted? Very few get an opportunity to do that, since the work in an IT services company can also be executed by anyone and everyone with a few months of training in a technology and there is no engineering involved there. May be in few product companies the engineering skills are really vital, but the work in major IT services is not engineering and all that matters is knowledge in the technology/language and most of the job profiles there don’t even require that, it will be a mere work on excel and word with a bit of script execution. Hence the companies started hiring the other graduate students as well for the same job profiles with little bit less pay.

Being unknown of these points the work at software was always glorified which has greatly influenced most of the young men from this part of our nation to take up as a profession. The work here can very easily be compared to work in any other domain or even the Govt. organizations with only more strict process being employed, with more professionalism, with a little bit higher pay levels which is fast diminishing, with good naming conventions involved for the job profiles. But, it is highly volatile as it is depended on the foreign markets for the projects by ignoring our own local market which is also changing and changing for good, because of which there might not be big packages to the associates anymore. IT services are majorly used in automation of a process may be for a company or any other organization. By now lot of automation has already happened, largely for many process involved in various organizations of developed nations; that is the reason why we see an increase in maintenance projects and a decrease in core development projects. Also by now lot of applications has already been developed and huge and huge lines of codes are already stuffed into the repositories of various companies and now if there is any need of automation or any application development it’s a mere search into their repositories that can get the code for a particular required module. If this trend is followed I guess in coming years, every possible process will have an application developed previously and only customization of it will solve the problem, that way the opportunities in the service industry might sharply decline!!

I had to elaborate on a particular industry as it is misunderstood by many outside of it and also by the men inside it; When I had a discussion over the growth in IT sector with my friends before the recession, none agreed when I said, “Growth is not the same as it used to be and it will deteriorate further”. Now when I ask the same persons they themselves say that they see no good growth. I also had to elaborate on it as it was hugely glorified in our society and now it is being downgraded. Here is where we need to change our outlook towards the various work domains. Every industry has got its relevance, also good and bad; it is not right to weigh an industry over the other and glorifying a professional belonging to a domain over another professional of other domain.

Coming back to the Govt. strategy of promoting IT services as it creates high employment over the other sectors, yes it’s true that the service sector will have a good potential of creating employment. But how good an employment is, if it is seen as a volatile job and how good it is when insecurity is always running at back of the mind and more importantly if it is not relevant to what we have studied.

So, here we need to change the decade old mindset, when I see the discussion shows about the less numbers turning out for engineering counseling, the officials are still backing with their strategies and the only reason they see for this happening is because of recession. It’s high time that they realize their mistakes or else it’s the people who will ouster them as they did with the counseling. They need to rethink about it and come out with more focused and sustained plan for the higher education and relevant employment. If I have to propose the strategies for it, I think of the following:

More focused and practical oriented, quality Higher Education for EVERYONE:

The higher education be it the traditional science’s/ arts and other courses or be it the engineering; the reliance on the exam’s quickly need to be refrained. The need of the hour is provide the best of the education with good faculty and good infrastructure at each of the universities and their affiliated colleges. Colleges being run only for the name sake and which lack the facilities should either be shut down or supported to enhance their levels. Decentralization also needs to be done, i.e, the present system of glorifying few good colleges’ needs to be stopped. Presently the focus is only on the IIT’s , IIM’s and few other colleges, this way the funds for other colleges is ill effected. Due to the high idolization of these institutes other colleges are always looked down.

But, is there any study or survey done, which can prove that an IIT’ian or IIM or ISBian performs really well over the other college educated professionals in their further professional levels? They might get higher salary initially due to the idolization of the institute they are from; but it is always possible that a professional from other college performs well and better than him and can command more respect in the organization. If we have to relate it to US; the Harvard’s, the Stanford’s are highly respected, regarded and recognized but not idolized. There even the other universities have their own relevance and equally good facilities. But here back in India, it is seen as a crime if we have got low CAT or JEE score and got into other college. I might have exaggerated, but the situation is no better than that, it is seen as an end of one’s career if he has not been able to get into these institutes. But what everyone fails to recognize is eventually they have to get into same companies with some different pay packages obviously and from there it’s the individual performance that matters.

Due to the present over focus on the few institutes, the funds and the attention are always to those institutes and other colleges get a step motherly treatment. Because of this the students are going through tremendous pressure for the entrance exams to get into them and then we start publicizing that getting into IIM’s is more difficult than getting into world best schools as more number of students compete for few seats (here we forget that most of them are not serious about it, and it is not a single but group of institutes) and we take pride in it. Rather we need to be depressed with the present situation; our strategy has failed to create more good institutes and thereby increasing the competition among the students for very few seats, not because of lack of funds but due to the lack of strategy, lack of willingness and lack of planning. Also because of this the talented and skilled are being restricted to only few colleges, but when these people are distributed over the other colleges the rest of the students will also gain the all important exposure from them.

I find it really silly when a state fights with the center for an IIT or IIM as A.P. did, lead by the noted academicians’. I don’t understand what for they want more of these institutes, even if one more IIT is granted what good it will do to the huge pool of students, only few hundred’s will get a quality education leaving the rest lakh’s of students to their destiny. What for they want to create world class amenities in very few selected schools when large number of other colleges and schools lack basic facilities like labs and at times even the tables and chairs. How good this strategy is working for India? The few selected students who were given quality education, how many from them work in India or work for generating revenue for India? Does any study or survey been conducted? So, focus needs to shift to other universities and colleges as well, they are needed to be empowered with faculty, infrastructure etc. The basic structure of the universities and colleges needs to be upgraded to higher levels.

And the students need to be encouraged to think according to their interests and not to go by the popular beliefs and paths. Though some routes might yield higher pay’s initially and there might be a social pressure to get into that domain and work, but eventually following the interest and skill levels will be more fruitful and also towards the end only it can earn higher recognition and also remuneration. This needs to be propagated well into the society, as most of us are presently giving away our interest levels in our subjects and skills and take up a higher paying job or get into more popular path to US and there again get into the same work of IT with the help of all helpful consultancies. Here I talk about the majority and not the exceptions and not about the other few because we will have exceptions everywhere.

We are thrown into such situations as we believe we are not competent enough may be because of the low standard education we received, the reason is again the same. Along with the increase of quality education, research is what needs to be stressed on. How many innovations we were able to make? How many patents we have filed? If we compare these with other nations we stand somewhere down the queue.

Each vertical of the education be it a science/arts or others have to be given its due relevance:

The present situation confronting the students whether to take up engineering or not, whether to take up other courses or not, is due to ill planning that has been done over the years. Each and every field is important and relevant, it’s important that we excel in whatever field we take up to earn high returns. And that can only be done only if we are really interested in the work we are doing. This also needs to be widely promoted.

Create employment opportunities in other sectors too:

Along with recognizing the power of service sector in employment, the Govt. has to promote other sectors too. Every domain has got a power to provide employment, so it is needed to encourage setting up of more enterprises, industries and businesses. Encourage the entrepreneurs tremendously as they are not only reducing the burden of the Govt. as a job seeker but also creating jobs for fellow nationals, the present policies of encouragement are nowhere close of being helpful a lot still needs to be done here. A lot of employment happens through small enterprises and business and not the big corporate, but the sad state is that the big companies which doesn’t need any encouragement receives high level of assistance and where as the small companies end up getting discouraged with the stringent policies.

These are the few points which I present for now, there might be many added to it as well. To the end I want to warn the officials and responsible persons of the state that-

“Nothing can do more harm to a nation, than an aimless and clueless educated Young men and women.”

And for a nation like us, where we back upon our population and human resources it can cause even more harm. Naturally our biggest strength is our young population and if they are being pushed into the dark and left clueless; our biggest strength can also turn into our biggest weakness and a disaster. I only hope they take note of this!!!