Decks cleared for multi-varsity PG programme in IT

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, OCT. 2. In yet another path-breaking initiative to meet the huge demand for high calibre IT professionals, the Andhra Pradesh Government has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) which will bring together leading global and Indian universities into a consortium to introduce an ``innovative, multi-university interdisciplinary post-graduate programme'' in Information Technology.

The MoU was signed by Prof.C. Subba Rao, Chairman of A.P. State Council of Higher Education and Prof. Raj Reddy of CMU in the presence of the Chief Minister, Mr.N. Chandrababu Naidu, at a function held at the Dr. MCR Institute of Administration on Monday.

Mr. Naidu described it as a ``mega dream'' come true. To begin with, a pilot programme would be taken up in a few university centres in Hyderabad and within two to three years, it would grow to a large number of centres to cover 10,000 post- graduates students. ``My desire is that it would produce about a lakh of IT post-graduates in the next few years,'' he said.

The American university had agreed to collaborate in the design and implementation of the multi-university programme, offer its courses and faculty resources and co-sign the degree to be awarded at the end of the programme. The Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT), as the post-graduate course would be known, would be a combination of courses in IT, discipline- specific courses and courses related to software skills along with high emphasis on the project.

Designed to meet international quality standards, this multi- university programme would use sophisticated distance education methodologies, combining a traditional Gurukul approach with unique strengths and capabilities of several international and Indian universities. It would be delivered through well-quipped electronic classrooms housed in the finest IT and engineering institutions.

A Centre for Distributed Learning would be set up by the consortium of universities to act as a nodal agency for offering this programme.

The Government had earlier constituted an IT Education Coordination Committee with leaders from the IT industry and experts in IT education, under the chairmanship of Prof. Raj Reddy, to give shape to this major initiative. This committee had taken the initiative to evolve a framework for courses to be sourced from leading universities and institutions and combined in an innovative manner with each university ensuring that its norms for courses/components distributed by it were met.

The Chief Minister said demand for high quality IT professionals was growing very rapidly. The US Bureau of Labour had projected that over the next 10 years, the top five fastest growing occupations would all be IT-related. It was estimated that in the U.S. alone there was a requirement of more than 3 lakh IT professionals at this time.

Mr. Naidu said a similar gap between demand and availability of IT professionals induced many countries to invite Indian IT professionals. Germany and Japan had recently shown keen interest in using the services of Indian IT professionals. About 23 per cent of all IT professionals in India came from Andhra Pradesh.

Internationally there was a trend towards establishing virtual university. The Virtual University of Monterrey in Mexico and the National Technological University in the U.S. had been trailblazers in this regard.

The Chief Minister said the consortium should explore similar relationships with other universities such as University of New South Wales in Australia and Cornell University in the US. He said the MSIT went beyond an online and virtual university programme. It combined the strength of close mentoring in the traditional Gurukul system with the versatility of a virtual university programme.

Prof. Raj Reddy said one million children were born in Andhra Pradesh every year and ``at least ten percent of them are as bright and brilliant as people sitting in this room.'' The only problem was they did not get opportunities. Customised learning was a dream few years ago. With the new experiment, the student- centered learning on a continuous basis was possible.

Prof. Subba Rao said the Chief Minister was the prime mover of the experiment. The Minister for Higher Education, Mr.K. Ramachander Rao, the Minister for School Education, Mr.K. Srihari, and others were present.

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