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Indian software engineers fall Short

si Team
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
si Team
India produces a large number of engineers every year. But multinationals find just 25 percent are employable, according to a McKinsey Global Institute study.

Microsoft employs a large number of Indian software engineers, in India and abroad. But the company is not happy with the quality of software programmers it recruits every year from India. So, to ramp up the standard the global technology behemoth does its own internal quality control. “India does not produce enough good computer engineers and those it does are good at theory but not very well equipped to handle the practical aspects,” says Microsoft chief technical officer Craig Mundie.

A sizeable number of engineers recruited by the 45,000 strong Infosys, are civil, mechanical or electrical engineers. Lack of quality computer engineering graduates is forcing companies like Infosys to recruit students from variety of engineering disciplines, and then train them in-house to become software engineers. An entry-level, 14-week program organized by Infosys’s education and research department is certified by educationists as being equivalent to a BS program in the U.S.

What is the way out? Way back in 1993, the Swaminathan Committee set up by the All India Council of Technical Education suggested that greater industry participation in the development of technical and engineering education in the country must be emphasized. The Committee advocated imposing a levy in education on the industry, increased government commitments on funding technical education and good tax incentives for engineering education. But the Committee’s recommendations have been forgotten, and engineering institutes continue to mushroom in every nook and corner of India without any quality control.
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