Asking information technology (IT) companies to take note of the circumstances and background of many students who are being rejected by the industry on the basis of “sub-standard verbal skills,” IT Minister Poongothai Aladi Aruna said on Monday, “Merit is an important criteria but taking along students from all segments of society is important too.”
While the government will try and give as many students as possible to the sector, she said that the industry must take “not just the icing, but the whole cake.”
She was speaking here at the launch of an education portal of the ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu (ICTACT).
Pointing out that the academy is an example of the symbiotic relationship between the industry, government and the students, she said: “Short-term plans for the next three to five years must be evolved to gainfully employ the thousands of students coming out of colleges every year. The share of rural applicants to engineering courses has grown from 11.6 per cent to 27.6 per cent in the last four years, but many of them are not getting jobs.”
Lakshmi Narayanan, Chairman of the ICTACT governing body, said, “Technology has to be used as leverage at the school and college level if education has to reach large numbers of students in the eligible age group.”
He said that schemes like the Right to Education could be successfully implemented only if the best teachers were accessible to students, wherever they may be.
“Apart from capacity addition, which, according to estimates of the Knowledge Commission, is 1,500 additional colleges in the next four to five years, technology can provide some solutions,” Mr. Narayanan said.
According to him, with the IT sector projected to grow from a net worth of $75 billion to $220 billion by 2020, the demand for quality workforce is bound to grow. A journal on Communication Technology brought out by ICTACT was released by the Minister.
