India needs more computer PhDs
Thursday, 11 October 2007, 19:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
London: A shortage of computer science PhDs in India threatens the country's role as the world's IT services outsourcing hub, the chairman of Microsoft India said. "It's an incredibly urgent and important issue," Microsoft's Ravi Venkatesan was quoted as saying by the Financial Times Thursday. "It affects the pipeline of future talent because teaching institutions aren't getting enough qualified faculty and, of course, if you really want to do cutting edge innovation in computer science, you're restricted by the pool of talent out there." India's universities produce only about 35 computer science PhDs a year compared with about 1,000 in the United States. Venkatesan said Indian corporate strategies to rely on the difference between Indian wages and those in developed markets are not sustainable because Indian entry-level IT salaries - currently about half those in the developed world - are increasing about 15 percent a year and will be on par with the developed world within the next seven to eight years. "It's inevitably a matter of time before these wage disparities disappear and the only thing that's going to matter is the quality of ideas coming out of an employee," Venkatesan told the newspaper. However, he said the industry could buy time by becoming better at training people. P. Anandan, managing director of Microsoft Research India, said that the gap in the meantime could be plugged by Indian PhDs coming back from abroad. "In computer science, probably about a quarter of PhDs that come out of US universities are of Indian origin," he said.
Source: IANS
siliconindia