By Thomas K. Grose
In a
developing country like India, the
emphasis is on “developing.”
And certainly, India is developing
like an overzealous bodybuilder
on a steady diet of steroids. It
boasts the world’s second-fastest-growing
economy—its GDP growth rate
in the first half of 2005 was an
eye-popping 8 percent. Its information
technology (IT) services sector
is expanding at a torrid pace of
30 percent a year. And given that
35 percent of the country’s
population of 1.027 billion—17
percent of the world’s total—is
age 15 or under, the demand for
new roads, cars, PCs and other consumer
electronics products is not about
to cool off anytime soon.
To accommodate that kind of growth,
India needs an ever increasing army
of engineers. Nasscom, a software
trade group, estimates that India’s
revving IT sector alone will need
2.3 million engineers by 2010 but
may miss that goal by 500,000. To
avoid that shortfall, it estimates
the country needs to graduate an
additional 65,000 engineers a year.
This school year, about 180,000
IT engineers will graduate. Another
report says an additional 10,000
new engineers are needed annually
to meet demands in other sectors,
ranging from autos to chemicals
to energy. Overall, India is graduating
around 350,000 engineers a year.
While India has one of world’s
most prestigious tech schools with
the six-campus India Institutes
of Technology (IIT), the campuses
churn out only about 3,000 graduates
a year. And 35 percent of them usually
head off to overseas jobs. So the
responsibility of providing India
with the engineers it needs to build
its future rests squarely on the
shoulders of its cadre of so-called
second-tier tech schools. There
are 2,240 technical schools in India,
graduating 207,000 students annually.
To be sure, most of these schools
are of poor quality, but the top
third tend to shine. And they have
hard-earned reputations for not
only graduating well-trained, motivated
engineers but also for working well
and closely with industry.
One of the top members of the second-tier
brigade is the Manipal Institute
of Technology (MIT). Founded in
1957, it is part of the Manipal
Group of Institutions. Its engineering
departments include electrical and
electronics, civil, mechanical,
chemical, and information and communications
technology.
 MIT
has a student body of around 4,000,
and its graduating class typically
numbers around a 1,000 a year. The
IITs are famous for being super-picky
in selecting students. Only about
2 percent of 200,000 applicants
get in. But admissions standards
at the better second-tier schools
are quite high, too. In 2005, 18,000
candidates fought over a mere 800
openings at MIT, according to Vinod
Bhat, MIT’s registrar. And
in 2006, Bhat expects 25,000 to
30,000 candidates to apply for the
same number of seats.
Student levels in India’s
tech schools are firmly set and
maintained by several regulatory
agencies. And getting permission
to increase student intake “is
a long, laborious process,”
Bhat explains. To skirt regulations
13 years ago, MIT set up an International
Center for Applied Sciences. Its
200 students spend two years at
MIT, then finish their degree programs
at a foreign university, in the
United States, Britain or Australia
(sidebar, Page 27).
Another respected second-tier school
is the PSG College of Technology.
Located in the highly industrialized
southern India city of Coimbatore,
in the state of Tamil Nadu, PSG
was established in 1951 by a charitable
trust. It has 5,700 undergraduates,
says Randayamy Rudramoorthy, PSG
principal, and offers bachelor’s
degrees in a dozen engineering disciplines.
India’s tech schools tend
to have strong links with industry,
both domestic and multinational.
PSG brags of having ties to nearly
100 top companies, including Microsoft,
Intel, Oracle and India’s
Tata Consultants. In March, Manipal
is opening a $7.6 million innovation
and incubation center, and it has
invited a number of major companies
to open labs in it, including Philips
Electronics, Infosys and Hewlett-Packard.
Bhat says the labs should provide
research opportunities for faculty
and hands-on experience for students.
Manipal also has a program that
allows companies to help structure
elective courses that will train
students in specific areas useful
to the company. Nasscom recently
launched an IT Workforce Development
Initiative, involving 35 companies,
with the goal of helping tech teachers
“better understand the requirements
of companies,” explains Deepakshi
Jha, a Nasscom spokeswoman.
Most graduates of India’s
tech schools remain in India. PSG
estimates that 80 percent of its
grads opt to stay put. A big reason
for that lack of wanderlust is the
proclivity of companies to recruit
students 12 to 18 months ahead of
graduation. PSG says 90 percent
of its students have job contracts
in hand upon receiving their diplomas.
Study
Abroad
The
Manipal Institute of Technology
(MIT) set up its International
Center for Applied Sciences
13 years ago to accommodate
students who ultimately wanted
to study overseas. Students
spend two years studying at
Manipal, then finish the final
two years of their undergraduate
degree program at an overseas
university. While the center
also sends students on to
schools in Britain and Australia,
U.S. schools are the destination
of choice for most participants,
says Vinod Bhat, MIT registrar.
One
reason is that MIT’s
curriculum mirrors the American
model. “Our curriculum
is so tailor-made to the United
States, students often go
on to other schools with which
we have no formal understanding,”
Bhat says. Some have ended
up at such top institutions
as Johns Hopkins University
and the University of Michigan.
Schools it does have formal
links with include St. Cloud
State University, the Milwaukee
School of Engineering and
Michigan Technological University.
Another
reason for the popularity
of American schools: Indian
students can earn money in
work/study programs and apply
for scholarships. That’s
not the case in the U.K. and
Australia, and it’s
a big help to students who
have to pay the going tuition
rate once they’re stateside.
U.S. tuitions range from $12,000
to $25,000 a year.
Charles
S. Tritt, an associate professor
of electrical engineering
at Milwaukee, says the school
began accepting students from
the center in the mid-1990s.
In some years, it’s
gotten as many as a dozen
students a year from Manipal.
The program isn’t problem-free,
however. Initially, students
from Manipal did very well
at Milwaukee, but more recent
arrivals have had academic
problems. Tritt admits: “We
probably accepted some students
we should not have.”
But standards have been raised,
and Milwaukee expects its
current crop of Manipal students
to perform well academically.
However
successful it is, Manipal’s
international program isn’t
doing much to ease India’s
engineering shortage. Says
Bhat: “Unless they have
strong ties to here, most
students prefer to stay in
the United States once they’ve
gotten used to American life.
Most do not miss India very
much.” -TG |
Starting salaries for engineers
tend to be around $400 a month.
That’s a minuscule amount
compared with American wages. But
it’s not a bad income for
a 22-year-old recent grad in a country
where the average monthly income
for an urban middle-class family
is $800. The good income is a necessity.
Like their American counterparts,
Indian tech graduates often begin
their careers saddled with student
loans that need repaying. Manipal
works with several banks that make
student loans very easy, Bhat says.
Loans to cover tuition are a fact
of life for most tech students,
even though tuitions for domestic
students are extremely low by U.S.
standards. A four-year bachelor’s
program costs between $4,000 and
$5,000 at PSG; Manipal charges closer
to $9,000.
The tech schools clearly profit
from their close relationships with
business, as their impressive job-placement
record indicates. But there is a
downside. The early recruitment
policies and the allure of top-paying
jobs means there’s a dearth
of graduate students at the schools.
Manipal has only 120 grad students.
PSG has 200 in its master’s
program and another 100 Ph.D. candidates.
“We don’t have many
takers,” Bhat says. And Rudramoorthy
admits that his grad students aren’t
always the most talented. “The
trouble is,” he explains,
“the cream all go to industry.”
Ultimately, that grad school drain
should concern industry, Bhat adds,
because “there will be no
talent pool for higher education,”
exacerbating what’s already
a major problem for tech schools—a
shortage of qualified teachers.
“Faculty recruitment is always
an issue because the IT industry
pays well,” Rudramoorthy says.
BusinessWeek magazine noted last
year that a typical Indian tech
school professor with 15 years’
experience will earn about $575
a month. A similarly experienced
software designer can pocket about
eight times that amount. Bhat knows
that the pay gap will never close
because “there is no way that
tech schools will ever be able to
match” industrial wages. However,
Manipal has come up with a method
to enable many professors to nearly
bridge it. It pays faculty members
who bring in research grants extra
“incentive fees.”
If the shortage of qualified teachers
is a headache for top schools like
Manipal and PSG, it’s life-threatening
to the two-thirds of the tech schools
that struggle to meet minimum levels
of academic standards. Despite the
demand for engineers and huge numbers
of eager candidates, many of the
lesser schools can’t attract
their full quota of students. The
government closed 100 underperforming
schools last year.
That’s a worrying development.
If it wants to keep its superheated
economy from cooling down, India
needs even more high-quality tech
schools like Manipal and PSG, turning
out ever greater numbers of engineers.
Thomas K. Grose is a freelance
writer based in Great Britain.
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