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People Issues Relating to Software Engineering Education
                  and Training in India
                    Kirti Garg                                                                Vasudeva Varma
  Indian Institute of Information Technology,                                   Indian Institute of Information Technology,
                Hyderabad, India                                                              Hyderabad, India
                +91-4023001967                                                                +91-4023001967
            kirti@research.iiit.ac.in                                                           vv@iiit.ac.in

ABSTRACT
Software Engineering and Information Technology (IT) jobs are
                                                                             1. INTRODUCTION
                                                                             Indian IT and ITeS (IT enabled Services) industry is enjoying the
the most sought after career options for Indian youth in the recent
                                                                             leadership position in the world accounting for 65% of the global
times. Indian Software industry has set up huge growth targets for
                                                                             industry in IT off shoring services. According to McKinsey 2005
future. However, lack of proper Software Engineering (SE)
                                                                             report on “Extending India's Leadership of the Global IT and
education may have severe consequences and may negatively
                                                                             BPO Industries”, the major reasons for this success include
affect the growth of the industry in general.
                                                                             availability of abundant talent and operational excellence [3].
We discuss some of the challenges related to software engineering            This report also states that IT and BOP industries account for
education and training in Indian academia and industry based on              700,000 direct and 2.5 million indirect jobs.
your interaction with industry through surveys, and discussions.
These include challenges arising out of issues in our Software               However, to sustain around 25% annual growth rates that are seen
Engineering educational goals, pedagogy and instruction as well              since year 2000, is a major challenge faced by the Indian IT
as the infrastructure. We discuss their effects on various aspects           industry. The major challenge is potential shortage of skilled
of software development. We put forth our suggestions that may               workers in the next decade. Currently only 25% of the technical
handle these challenges to a large extent.                                   graduate students are employable. The hit rate (ratio between the
                                                                             number of actual recruitments to number of job applications
We also discuss the essential and minimal set of software                    received by the Personnel department) is around 5-10% in major
engineering knowledge, skills and dispositions that the industry             software services companies.
requires from young engineers willing to join the industry.
                                                                             Lack of adequately trained professionals is the major bottleneck
This paper provides guidelines for the academia and learning
                                                                             curtailing further growth of IT industry in India. This is the
centers of the industry by focusing on important SE education
                                                                             people related issue in IT sector which is directly resulting from
issues, their causes and possible solutions. This, in turn would
                                                                             poor software engineering education and training infrastructure in
help to make SE Education more effective and inline with
                                                                             the country. The problems of SE education in India are mostly
requirements and goals of the Indian Software industry and
                                                                             inter-related. Some of these issues have been discussed very
making these aspiring software engineers ready for taking
                                                                             briefly by Mahanti et al in [2].
Software Engineering as a successful profession.
                                                                             We would like to distinguish between problems of Computer
Categories and Subject Descriptors                                           Science education and Software Engineering education, as these
K.3.2 [Computer and Information Science Education]                           two disciplines are different in nature and hence their issues also
                                                                             differ to some extend. SE education problems lead to more people
                                                                             issues as SE is largely a techno-managerial subject and people
General Terms                                                                form an important and integral part of the discipline.
Software Engineering Education,
                                                                             To understand the education and training issues and the gap
                                                                             between the demand and supply, we conducted a small survey
Keywords                                                                     involving a questionnaire and a few interviews with senior
Software Engineering, education, problem solving, challenges                 executives of many major software services companies in India
                                                                             (including TCS, Infosys, Satyam, and Accenture). Most of the
                                                                             findings presented in this paper are based on this survey and our
                                                                             observations of the academic scenario since a couple of years.
                                                                             Survey also helped us to gauge Indian Software industry’s
 Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
                                                                             perspective of SEE challenges and problems. Respondents were
 personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
 not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that         asked about two aspects; a) the SE knowledge and skills expected
 copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy    from an entry level Software Engineer. B) Problems faced by
 otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists,    them due to ineffective SE education.
 requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
 Conference’04, Month 1–2, 2004, City, State, Country.
 Copyright 2004 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0004…$5.00.
This paper is organized around issues (or current problematic         Information systems) are a huge part of the syllabus as opposed to
features), their consequences/impact and guidelines of solving the    all essential SE topics. But SAD courses are preferred in the sense
issues. The issues represent the current problematic state of SE      that they give a more holistic picture of SE as compared to the
education, i.e. what are the troublesome features of SE education     traditional SE course.
in India? Next we discuss various consequences due to these
features. Many features may contribute to a single.                   2.2 Industrial Requirements for Qualified
We suggest guidelines that may help us to improve the state of        Personnel
SEE. These guidelines would be useful to form definite action         Indian Software industry has always felt that there are not enough
paths for SE educational reforms.                                     well qualified software engineers that can fulfill the industry
                                                                      needs. It is important to identify the true nature of discipline and
2. CURRICULUM ISSUES                                                  accordingly decide the meaning of ‘qualified’. This would derive
We studied a number of SE course syllabi. These courses were          the educational goals or curriculum of any SE education
part of CS degrees being offered in India. Most of these were         endeavor. We discussed the notion of ‘qualified’ with our
technical universities that offer undergraduate degree courses and    industry counterparts and all agreed that any SE courses should
produce maximum number of computer science graduates for the          not be restricted to the knowledge and understanding component
industry. Our curriculum related observations are partially based     of learning, rather should include higher order cognitive skills
upon the study of these syllabi [9].                                  such as application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation as well.
                                                                      The survey asked the experts from industry to rate the importance
2.1 Case of Missing Engineering in Software                           of various other skills (problem solving, communication, self-
                                                                      learning, research aptitude etc.) on a scale of 0 to 5, where, 0 is
Engineering Curriculums
                                                                      not required at all and 5 is most required. 100% of the
We went through a number of SE syllabus, and found that very
                                                                      respondents gave a minimum rating of 4 to the problem solving
few talk about enduring “engineering principles and practices”
                                                                      skills. This was followed by self-learning which was given a
such as solving of practical problems by applying scientific
                                                                      constant rating of 4 by all.
knowledge, reasoning about choices, assuring qualities of their
work products, manage conflicting constraints of time, efforts and    Industry also expected that students are at least aware of various
cost etc [5]. [6]. [8]. Most of the SE syllabus do not encourage      process models and standards such as ISO, SEI-CMM, Six Sigma
students to develop a deep understanding of the discipline and        etc. They also emphasized on familiarity of students with various
hence develop the ability to make decisions and produce               tools and techniques such as version control systems, bug trackers
deliverables with responsibility. It is assumed that this ability     etc.
would develop with actual work experience and it is not the           We observed that many industries tend to focus on contemporary
academia’s job to facilitate it.                                      skill requirements such as vendor certifications in a particular tool
Software Engineering course syllabus in most of the Indian            or technique.
universities focuses on the theoretical aspects. The focus is more    But the academic curriculum is heavily governed by knowledge
on the knowledge aspect (factual, conceptual and procedural) and      components. Some curriculums include a project for inculcating
very little on application of SE skills and knowledge. Practical      application skills. But rarely do a curriculum included problem
aspects, best practices, recent developments are not included and     solving skills, or best practices. Thus the curriculums are mostly
students rarely get a chance for application of the knowledge and     theory based.
skills they learned.
                                                                      Many curriculums include soft skills (communication, team-
Higher order skills such as problem solving are more a part of the    building) etc. as a separate course offering. But communication
SE curriculum. Some computer science programs offer a problem         specific to SE industrial practice is again rare.
solving course clubbed along with a programming course. But
such courses do not discuss problem solving techniques or             2.3 Lack of Due Emphasis on SE in CS
heuristics. They convey the message of systematic algorithm
design before coding.
                                                                      courses
                                                                      There are very few courses offered by Indian universities that
The syllabi are usually process driven. The usual syllabus starts     have Software Engineering major. Some IITs, IIITs (Indian
with need of SE, followed by SDLC and various phases of SDLC.         Institute of Information Technology) and private vocational
Very limited time is prescribed for umbrella activities such as       institutes such as NIIT, APTech etc. offer SE specializations, but
quality, estimation, project management etc. Most of them             not at the under-graduate level. The IIITs are a decade old setups,
endorse a particular notion of software quality (lesser number of     and produce about 100-250 graduates with SE specialization or
bugs means higher quality product) and traditional methods of         SE electives per year, which a miniscule percentage of man-
software estimation. Here also, students study only the theoretical   power requirement of industry.
aspect and don’t get any hand-on experience of using these
                                                                      Most universities offer SE as just one of the courses along with
techniques before actual usage in industrial scenario.
                                                                      other Computer Science courses. Graduates from such universities
Some universities package the SE course as a System Analysis          get to study SE for at most a semester. For some CS students this
and Design (SAD) course. This has been observed in Bachelors          is the only chances to get familiar with Software Engineering
or Master level courses in Science with IT specialization like        before starting the career as Software Engineers.
M.Sc (IT), B.Sc. (CS) or B.Sc. (IT). SAD course is more of a
systems design course and designing of MIS (Management
2.4 Missing Emphasis on SE Research
Most of the Indian universities that offer CS courses are teaching
universities. IITs, IIITs, and IISc conduct SE research but not on a
                                                                          4. RESOURCE RELATED ISSUES
large scale. Some prominent research centers in Industry are              4.1 Lack of Educational Infrastructure
SETLabs, Infosys, and Microsoft Research. The possible reasons            India has India currently has around 347 institutes of higher
are that Indian academic community is not research oriented. Not          education and 16,885 colleges with a total enrollment of over 9.9
many faculty advisors available for SE research. Also, owing to           million. These produce around 495,000 technical graduates,
the social fabric, most students prefer to join high paying software      nearly 2.3 million other graduates and over 300,000 postgraduates
development jobs, instead of getting involved with low paying             every year [6].
and time consuming SE research. Hence the country lacks the SE            IT sector (ADM, product development) absorbs about about 15%
research culture and hence misses upon the benefits the research          of the total engineering graduates produced by academia. An
can bring to services sector in country.                                  upcoming problem is that the sector is growing at a rate of about
                                                                          30-35% per year. But enrollment in CS courses is not growing at
3. PEDAGOGY ISSUES                                                        the same rate. Thus, there is a huge gap is demand and supply
3.1 Non-effective Classroom Teaching                                      which is constantly increasing and is creating a huge pressure on
Most of SE courses in India use the traditional class-room based          the academic system to produce more employable graduates.
teaching pedagogy. But SE is an engineering discipline and                NASSCOM already fears that by 2010, the demand supply gap
should focus on application of knowledge and skills and other             may be around 500,000 graduates [3]. [4].
practical aspects of software development. This is difficult in
traditional class-room based environments that are effective for          4.2 Large Class rooms
imparting theoretical knowledge, but do not provide chance for
hands-on experience or practical training. Thus such                      Following the software boom, the enrollments in CS courses
environments are unsuitable for SE education. Other engineering           increased manifolds. Since number of technical institutes that
disciplines include a lot of labs, which is amiss in current SE           provide quality education is low, hence huge numbers of students
education practice in India, especially in university environments.       are enrolled in each class. This number may reach to more then
                                                                          100 for very good institutes. Bigger class sizes may negatively
3.2 Not So-successful Projects                                            affect teaching efficiency as well as are not conducive for non-
Most of the professional courses (B.Tech., MCA, BCA) include a            traditional methods of teaching, which may be more effective for
mandatory project in curriculum to take care of the practice aspect       SE education [2]. [1]. [5].
in SE courses. But this project offering faces three major
problems.                                                                 4.3 Time Constraints
                                                                          Most of the computer science courses include SE as a one
First, there is usually a one to two semester gap between attending       semester course. This usually means 2-3 hours of classroom
the SE course and applying the learning in the project. This is           teaching per week for about 16-18 weeks effectively. This is
sufficient for students to forget the basic principles by the time        hardly sufficient even to cover the complete breadth of a proper
they need it. For example, the course is usually offered in the 3rd       SE course. Here, we refer to the course breadth guided by
or 4th semester, but the project is offered in the last semester          SWEBOK [7]. There is not enough time to discuss any topic in-
(sixth) in a BCA or MCA course. Similarly, SE course is offered           depth. If project training is part of this SE course, then students as
in 5th or 6th semester in a B.Tech, but project is usually a 7th or 8th   well as faculty get more squeezed for time.
semester activity.
Second, it is not necessary that students opt for a software              4.4 Lack of Qualified Teachers
development project for this project work, and even when it is a          Since the software boom, the number of Software Engineering
software development project, there is no proper assessment if the        course offering increases many folds. But the number of qualified
students explicitly performed SE practices or used SE tools and           teachers did not. Most of the Software engineering teachers do not
techniques. Since not part of assessment, hence students avoid            have a considerable experience of software development
learning of SE practices, tools and techniques and focus on the           themselves. There SE experience is the SE course they took as a
end-product (code) that would get them more marks.                        student. Hence, they can talk about the theoretical aspects, that
Third, it has been observed that most of the projects done at             too from books. Such teachers cannot discuss the intricacies of
under-graduate level are academic in nature and hence do not              software development or practice of software development in a
represent the problems of scale and complexity of usual software          convincing way.
development. Most of the SE concepts and practices students               When given a choice of teaching a programming course and a
learn are more applicable for large scale complex projects. Thus,         software engineering course, most teachers opt for the
students find it difficult and irrelevant to apply these SE               programming course, because they themselves find the SE course
knowledge and skills for the academic scale projects, in turn get         to be uninteresting to teach and are well aware of the reputation of
frustrated and develop the notion that Software Engineering is            the SE course among the students.
mere theoretical and not useful subject [1]. [6]. [8].
5. OTHERS CHALLENGES AND ISSUES                                          For example, software quality gets affected by decisions taken
                                                                         during early development phases (analysis and design), but many
5.1 Programming is More Attractive than SE                               Indian software developers are not well versed with these SE
Students usually are more interested in programming as compared          skills, do not have a clear idea about customer requirements and
to Software Engineering. There may be many reasons for this              hence though good programmers, the end product may not be of
observed phenomenon. One is that students are exposed to                 desired quality. This affects the brand value of services and
programming much earlier then SE. And when they learn SE,                products of Indian software industry. A side effect of this is that
they feel that following SE would not help them in their programs        software verification and validation activities take up a lot of time
(which are usually academic in nature and SE they learn is for           and are disliked by majority programmers as they are not hard-
complex, large scale programs). They also tend to favor                  core programming activities.
programming as they can see quick results unlike SE where
results can be intangible and documentation, design kind of jobs         6.3 Addition to Training Problems
take up a lot of time when done correctly. Thus students favor           Effectively, purpose of academia is to impart the necessary
programming over SE and rarely opt for advance courses in SE.            programming and SE knowledge and skills to the students and
                                                                         prepare them to take professional responsibilities in industry. In
5.2 Lack on Interest in Higher Education                                 this context, purpose of industrial training should be to train new
Indian social fabric is such that students are interested in joining a   recruits as per organization specific skills. But the training
high paying job as soon as they finish up minimum educational            programs include retraining on programming and SE as well
requirements. Very few join post-graduate or research programs.          because the incoming entry level programmers are not well versed
Most of the students join post-graduate programs to improve their        with these.
brand value in job market.                                               Most industries would prefer the entry level recruits to be billable
                                                                         from day 1 of their joining the project, but a lot of training
6. CONSEQUENCES                                                          continues on the project also. Many client organizations do not
We discussed various features as observed by the authors in SE           like the working of new recruits of their important projects as they
education offerings in India. These issues or features cause many        are not sure of their quality of work. Hence such recruits are a
short and long term people related problems in the software              financial liability on the project for a while, because nobody has
development industry. Usually multiple issues are linked to a            the confidence to give them jobs that demand responsibility.
single problem. In this section, we look at various negative effects     One important problem is that since the entry level programmers
of these characteristics of Indian SE education.                         lack vital industry skills such as self-learning, and effective
                                                                         communication, they spend more time in training, because these
6.1 Missing the Holistic Picture                                         skills are required for learning newer skills as well. Also, the
Most of the employees become task oriented, i.e. their focus is on       training programs are bounded with traditional lecture based
the given task. They do not understand the context of work and           training and performance based assessment that are not less
miss the bigger picture. They intend to finish the given work by         effective, but also labor intensive and require constant support
employing whatever learning they have and do not think about             from training staff or mentors.
ways to improve the efficiency of task or effectiveness of
                                                                         Another problem is that the since the CS and SE programs
deliverables. Thus, they do a task because it has been assigned to
                                                                         throughout the country are not structured or standardized, hence
them and do not try to understand the reason why they are doing
                                                                         there has to be an essential training component to bring all the
it. This may lead to various issues, such as:
                                                                         entry level recruits to the same level.
*Dislike towards work (lack the motivation). This has been
                                                                         Long duration training programs are a necessary evil, as they are
observed among the testing staff of a project. Many employees
                                                                         an unnecessary expense of time, effort and money, but
develop a dislike to the process part. But companies have to
                                                                         organizations cant do away with them.
employ processes for management and branding reasons. This
creates un-necessary tensions between the management and                 6.4 Inadequately skilled man-power
employees, where employees feel that the process is un-necessary
                                                                         This is one of the major challenges being faced by Indian
and a burdan. *Employees not working at maximum effectiveness
                                                                         software industry. Indian industry is not only short-supplied with
level. *Little contribute to innovation, research or further
                                                                         good programmers [3]. but also with good software engineers.
development. *Reluctance to adopt research and innovation
                                                                         Though the entry level employees may be good in programming,
coming from academia as they do not understand the benefits.
                                                                         they lack other essential knowledge and skills such as problem
6.2 Low quality Products and Services                                    solving skills, self learning, communication skills, etc.
Software product quality is directly affected by the process             The industry is providing services other then software
quality and the engineer’s view and commitment to quality (By            development i.e software maintenance and testing services. But
product, we mean a software application of service here). But            the current SE syllabus does not cover these topics at all or cover
when employees do not understand and possess the essential SE            them very briefly.
knowledge and skills, the processes they follow are not effective        Another issue is that these entry level programmers need to take
and the product quality gets affected in return. The engineer’s          up various other important roles in the software development life-
attitudes towards qualities of a product also affect the decisions       cycle in order to climb the value chain. These roles include
taken by him, which in turn affect the quality.                          requirement engineers, software and solution architects, testing
                                                                         leads etc. All these require higher order cognitive skills and self-
learning skills to learn and successfully perform the duties. Now       knowledge and skills. Thus including problem solving essentially
our SE education system neither provides explicit role based            means including the facilitation of these higher order cognitive
training, nor does it facilitate the development of these higher        skills in curriculum. Though it seems like a difficult task, but it is
order cognitive skills. Many organizations are of the view that         essential, because it is related to the nature of SE.
they could find work-around to deal with lack of talent at the          Since people work in large teams, hence communication and team
entry level positions, but the real problems they would face in         work also become important. Another important skill is the self-
future is finding rightly skilled personnel for these very specific     learning ability. SE and IT are fast evolving fields. Technologies
roles.                                                                  change very fast. It is important that the software engineers can
Indian Software industry is developing very fast and many sectors       update their knowledge independently.
are trying to incorporate newer tools, techniques, methods and          SWEBOK [5]. may help to come up with a well balanced and
standards as part of their development process. But the developers      structured curriculum, especially for a breadth oriented or a first
do not possess the skills such as self-learning and analytical skills   course in SE [7].
to understand and adopt newer technologies efficiently and
effectively. Thus the research and innovation is not getting            A proper, engineering focused curriculum would help to tackle
heartily absorbed by our industry, thus giving up on chances of         the problem of inadequately skilled man-power and would have
developing newer areas of competency.                                   subtle but long term positive effect on quality of products and
                                                                        services and hence on growth of Indian Software industry.
6.5 Growth Issues
Indian industry is in danger of loosing its edge of low-cost            7.2 Standardization of Curriculum
computing and engineering services to newer competitions like           The SE curriculum can be divided into two parts: a) The
China, and Latin American countries [3]. Thus industry is looking       minimum basic or a first course and b) advance topics. Atleast the
at newer avenues of growth. This include not only providing the         minimum basic part should be standardized by policy makers and
basic software development services effectively and efficiently,        all education and training institutes should follow this minimal
but also adding value to the customer’s business by providing           curriculum. This minimum curriculum should include basic SE
innovative software solutions. One possible innovation is in            knowledge and skills along with problem solving skills. Soft skills
Software Engineering tools and applications.           Further the      can be prescribed as well. Advance topics can be covered as per
efficiency and effectiveness would be coming from deeper                the requirements.
understanding of quality attributes pertaining to software product      Such an approach would bring quality control to SE education.
and software development process. But this seems like a distant         The recruiters can be ensured that the entry level programmer is
challenge right now, because our software engineers are very task       well versed with the common minimum knowledge and skills.
oriented, non-focused on meta-cognitive skills and rarely do focus      Accreditations can be developed accordingly for quality control
on innovation and efficiency. And a major reason for this is the        of educational institutes.
way they have been learning.
                                                                        Advantage for training staff is that they can utilize their resources
                                                                        for training for the new entrants on organization specific
7. GUIDELINES                                                           requirements instead of basic SE.
We believe that many of these problems require conceptual
changes in our educational endeavors. We need to prepare a              7.3 Balance between Long-term and Short-
learning environment that is conducive for proper alignment of
                                                                        term Goals
our long and short term requirements (educational goals,
                                                                        It is essential to strike a balance between both basic SE and
expressed as curriculum), and our instruction and assessment.
                                                                        enduring engineering principles and skills and industry or domain
These guidelines will help in creating such an environment and
                                                                        specific relevant skills (to achieve short term goals). Study of
would help to tackle the negative effect of various SEE challenges
                                                                        contemporary process standards, tools and techniques, vendor
that threaten the Indian Software industry.
                                                                        certifications would aid to keep the industry in pace with global
                                                                        advances in practice. Mahanty et al also confirm this in their
7.1 Identification and inclusion of Relevant                            study [2].
SE skills in SE Curriculum                                              A good balance would help the country in brand building, and
Our survey results confirmed our belief that Software Engineering       would provide an edge over competitors. A balanced curriculum
curriculums require a radical shift from just theory to a well          would also help the training departments to focus on more
balanced mix of theory (knowledge), and skills.                         important aspects of training instead of getting involved with
The knowledge component consists of SE factual, conceptual,             training on basic SE knowledge and skills.
procedural and meta-cognitive knowledge (referred as SE                 7.4 Pedagogy Reforms
knowledge further in this paper). Being an engineering discipline,      It has been well proven that traditional class room teaching
SE education should include the SE skills, and application of           approaches does not work for SE education because they focus on
these knowledge and skills, into the curriculum, because                theoretical aspects. The teaching pedagogy should be chosen as
computing and engineering services essentially mean application         per the learning goals and should increase the effectiveness of SE
of computing science related knowledge and skills to solve              education by making it contextual, interesting and learner centric
practical problems in an efficient and effective manner [6]. It is      [1]. . There are various teaching approaches that help to inculcate
important to note that Problem solving involves deep                    even the higher order cognitive skills. Such pedagogies should be
understanding and analysis of problem, evaluation of alternatives,      encouraged. When student’s can see the practical aspects of a
decision making and finally application of programming and SE
theory or skill in a context, they understand it much better and        latest technologies and educate them on the what is expected out
useful. This not only helps in a life-long learning, but also handles   of graduate students by the industry [4].
the people issues such as interest and motivation for both students     It is important to understand that subjects like software
and teachers. This motivation and interest are the key to student’s     engineering cannot be taught effectively without first hand
interest in advance study or research in SE topics.                     experience. The industry should help the academia by providing
Use of approaches such as project-centered learning or case             internships for the teachers and also benefit from their wisdom
studies can be made role based to help students acquire role based      and perspectives. Thus, academia and industry cooperation can
expertise.                                                              only be a win-win for all the stakeholders and benefit the overall
It is important to note that non-traditional pedagogies are effective   ecosystem of the IT in the country.
only when the assessment is also competence centered and not
performance centered, and consider all learning dimensions
(application of knowledge and skills, problem solving skills), and      8. CONCLUSIONS
not just the theory.                                                    In this paper we have tried to address India specific people issues
Similarly, curriculum reforms would be effective only when              in IT industry in general and software engineering education and
teaching pedagogies would be well aligned with these educational        training issues in particular. We have tried to make our study as
goals.                                                                  objective as possible by conducting a survey and interviews with
                                                                        senior executives from the software services industry.
7.5 Research Focus
SEE scenario in India needs advance courses that may attract            We have classified various challenges mainly into curriculum
students towards research. The teaching pedagogies can be help          related, resource related, and pedagogy related issues. We believe
here, as they may help inculcate problem solving skills, a pre-         by addressing these challenges properly we will be able to
requisite for research.                                                 overcome the future bottlenecks that will affect the growth of IT
                                                                        industry. We have suggested a few curriculum, pedagogy,
7.6 Infrastructural Improvements                                        assessment, and infrastructural reforms in the software
Lack of proper infrastructure can be a big hindrance to SE              engineering education that will aid in overcoming the challenges
educational reforms. The number of institutes that offer CS and         we have discussed.
SE programs should be increased. But they should be regulated
for a minimum basic curriculum and facilities. These facilities         9. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
should include well trained teaching staff, access to SE tools and      We acknowledge the inputs provided by respondents of our
study material.                                                         survey. Their thoughtful responses gave us a deeper insight into
Another important aspect is allotting adequate time to SE courses.      the educational links between industry and academia.
One way to do this is by splitting the SE coursework over two
consecutive semesters.                                                  10. REFERENCES
Motivated, experienced, and well trained teachers are required to       [1]. Garg K., Varma V., A Study of the Effectiveness of Case
carry out the reforms. Their activities would include design of              Study approach in Software Engineering Education, in
proper curriculums, conducting learning sessions and                         proceedings of 20th Conference on Software Engineering
assessments, motivation students for deep learning etc. They                 Education and Training (CSEET 2007), Dublin, July 2007
should be well versed and experienced with software development         [2]. Mahanti, R. and Mahanti, P. K. 2005. Software Engineering
and should keep their knowledge current. One way is to train the             Education From Indian Perspective. In Proceedings of the
faculty in industry, or by bringing the practical knowledge to               18th Conference on Software Engineering Education &
academia through a system of guest lectures and/or adjunct                   Training (April 18 - 20, 2005). CSEET. IEEE Computer
faculty from industry.                                                       Society, 111-117.
                                                                        [3]. NASSCOM McKinsey Study 2005 Executive summary on
7.7 Industry–academia co-operation                                           Extending India's Leadership of the Global IT and BPO
Joint efforts of SE Industry and academia can help to alleviate              Industries,
many of the problems we discussed in section 6. There are several            http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.asp
initiatives already in place for improving the academia industry             x?id=4969
cooperation. This include starting of new era educational               [4]. NASSCOM                  Education              Initiatives
institutions (like IIITs – the Indian institutes of Information              http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/LandingPage.asp
Technolgy) focusing on high end research and post-graduate                   x?id=5794
education. These institutions are expected to come up as public-        [5]. Shaw M., Software Engineering Education: A Roadmap, In
private-partnerships (PPP) and work very closely with industry to            A. Finkelstein (Ed.), The Future of Software Engineering
define their vision and goals.                                               (pp. 371-380). New York, NY: ACM Press, 2000.
In addition, offering of accreditation programs and “finish the         [6]. Shaw M.. Prospects for an engineering discipline of
school” certification programs by NASSCOM kind of bodies,                    software. IEEE Software, pages 15-24, November 1990.
mentorship programs where industry partner will provide                 [7]. Software Engineering Coordinating Committee of ACM and
mentorship to the project students, internships in the industry              IEEE. Guide to the Software Engineering Body of
where the students are exposed to real world and meaningful                  Knowledge. http://www.swebok.org
challenges, train the trainer programs where college and                [8]. Tockey S. R. Recommended Skills and Knowledge for
university teachers are being trained by the industry experts on             Software Engineers. In proceedings of International
Conference on 12th Software Engineering Education &
     training, 1999, pp168-176
[9]. Various       SE      course     syllabi available at
     http://education4india.com/syllabus/
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India Specific Issues with Software Engineering Education

  • 1. People Issues Relating to Software Engineering Education and Training in India Kirti Garg Vasudeva Varma Indian Institute of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India Hyderabad, India +91-4023001967 +91-4023001967 kirti@research.iiit.ac.in vv@iiit.ac.in ABSTRACT Software Engineering and Information Technology (IT) jobs are 1. INTRODUCTION Indian IT and ITeS (IT enabled Services) industry is enjoying the the most sought after career options for Indian youth in the recent leadership position in the world accounting for 65% of the global times. Indian Software industry has set up huge growth targets for industry in IT off shoring services. According to McKinsey 2005 future. However, lack of proper Software Engineering (SE) report on “Extending India's Leadership of the Global IT and education may have severe consequences and may negatively BPO Industries”, the major reasons for this success include affect the growth of the industry in general. availability of abundant talent and operational excellence [3]. We discuss some of the challenges related to software engineering This report also states that IT and BOP industries account for education and training in Indian academia and industry based on 700,000 direct and 2.5 million indirect jobs. your interaction with industry through surveys, and discussions. These include challenges arising out of issues in our Software However, to sustain around 25% annual growth rates that are seen Engineering educational goals, pedagogy and instruction as well since year 2000, is a major challenge faced by the Indian IT as the infrastructure. We discuss their effects on various aspects industry. The major challenge is potential shortage of skilled of software development. We put forth our suggestions that may workers in the next decade. Currently only 25% of the technical handle these challenges to a large extent. graduate students are employable. The hit rate (ratio between the number of actual recruitments to number of job applications We also discuss the essential and minimal set of software received by the Personnel department) is around 5-10% in major engineering knowledge, skills and dispositions that the industry software services companies. requires from young engineers willing to join the industry. Lack of adequately trained professionals is the major bottleneck This paper provides guidelines for the academia and learning curtailing further growth of IT industry in India. This is the centers of the industry by focusing on important SE education people related issue in IT sector which is directly resulting from issues, their causes and possible solutions. This, in turn would poor software engineering education and training infrastructure in help to make SE Education more effective and inline with the country. The problems of SE education in India are mostly requirements and goals of the Indian Software industry and inter-related. Some of these issues have been discussed very making these aspiring software engineers ready for taking briefly by Mahanti et al in [2]. Software Engineering as a successful profession. We would like to distinguish between problems of Computer Categories and Subject Descriptors Science education and Software Engineering education, as these K.3.2 [Computer and Information Science Education] two disciplines are different in nature and hence their issues also differ to some extend. SE education problems lead to more people issues as SE is largely a techno-managerial subject and people General Terms form an important and integral part of the discipline. Software Engineering Education, To understand the education and training issues and the gap between the demand and supply, we conducted a small survey Keywords involving a questionnaire and a few interviews with senior Software Engineering, education, problem solving, challenges executives of many major software services companies in India (including TCS, Infosys, Satyam, and Accenture). Most of the findings presented in this paper are based on this survey and our observations of the academic scenario since a couple of years. Survey also helped us to gauge Indian Software industry’s Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for perspective of SEE challenges and problems. Respondents were personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that asked about two aspects; a) the SE knowledge and skills expected copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy from an entry level Software Engineer. B) Problems faced by otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, them due to ineffective SE education. requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Conference’04, Month 1–2, 2004, City, State, Country. Copyright 2004 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0004…$5.00.
  • 2. This paper is organized around issues (or current problematic Information systems) are a huge part of the syllabus as opposed to features), their consequences/impact and guidelines of solving the all essential SE topics. But SAD courses are preferred in the sense issues. The issues represent the current problematic state of SE that they give a more holistic picture of SE as compared to the education, i.e. what are the troublesome features of SE education traditional SE course. in India? Next we discuss various consequences due to these features. Many features may contribute to a single. 2.2 Industrial Requirements for Qualified We suggest guidelines that may help us to improve the state of Personnel SEE. These guidelines would be useful to form definite action Indian Software industry has always felt that there are not enough paths for SE educational reforms. well qualified software engineers that can fulfill the industry needs. It is important to identify the true nature of discipline and 2. CURRICULUM ISSUES accordingly decide the meaning of ‘qualified’. This would derive We studied a number of SE course syllabi. These courses were the educational goals or curriculum of any SE education part of CS degrees being offered in India. Most of these were endeavor. We discussed the notion of ‘qualified’ with our technical universities that offer undergraduate degree courses and industry counterparts and all agreed that any SE courses should produce maximum number of computer science graduates for the not be restricted to the knowledge and understanding component industry. Our curriculum related observations are partially based of learning, rather should include higher order cognitive skills upon the study of these syllabi [9]. such as application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation as well. The survey asked the experts from industry to rate the importance 2.1 Case of Missing Engineering in Software of various other skills (problem solving, communication, self- learning, research aptitude etc.) on a scale of 0 to 5, where, 0 is Engineering Curriculums not required at all and 5 is most required. 100% of the We went through a number of SE syllabus, and found that very respondents gave a minimum rating of 4 to the problem solving few talk about enduring “engineering principles and practices” skills. This was followed by self-learning which was given a such as solving of practical problems by applying scientific constant rating of 4 by all. knowledge, reasoning about choices, assuring qualities of their work products, manage conflicting constraints of time, efforts and Industry also expected that students are at least aware of various cost etc [5]. [6]. [8]. Most of the SE syllabus do not encourage process models and standards such as ISO, SEI-CMM, Six Sigma students to develop a deep understanding of the discipline and etc. They also emphasized on familiarity of students with various hence develop the ability to make decisions and produce tools and techniques such as version control systems, bug trackers deliverables with responsibility. It is assumed that this ability etc. would develop with actual work experience and it is not the We observed that many industries tend to focus on contemporary academia’s job to facilitate it. skill requirements such as vendor certifications in a particular tool Software Engineering course syllabus in most of the Indian or technique. universities focuses on the theoretical aspects. The focus is more But the academic curriculum is heavily governed by knowledge on the knowledge aspect (factual, conceptual and procedural) and components. Some curriculums include a project for inculcating very little on application of SE skills and knowledge. Practical application skills. But rarely do a curriculum included problem aspects, best practices, recent developments are not included and solving skills, or best practices. Thus the curriculums are mostly students rarely get a chance for application of the knowledge and theory based. skills they learned. Many curriculums include soft skills (communication, team- Higher order skills such as problem solving are more a part of the building) etc. as a separate course offering. But communication SE curriculum. Some computer science programs offer a problem specific to SE industrial practice is again rare. solving course clubbed along with a programming course. But such courses do not discuss problem solving techniques or 2.3 Lack of Due Emphasis on SE in CS heuristics. They convey the message of systematic algorithm design before coding. courses There are very few courses offered by Indian universities that The syllabi are usually process driven. The usual syllabus starts have Software Engineering major. Some IITs, IIITs (Indian with need of SE, followed by SDLC and various phases of SDLC. Institute of Information Technology) and private vocational Very limited time is prescribed for umbrella activities such as institutes such as NIIT, APTech etc. offer SE specializations, but quality, estimation, project management etc. Most of them not at the under-graduate level. The IIITs are a decade old setups, endorse a particular notion of software quality (lesser number of and produce about 100-250 graduates with SE specialization or bugs means higher quality product) and traditional methods of SE electives per year, which a miniscule percentage of man- software estimation. Here also, students study only the theoretical power requirement of industry. aspect and don’t get any hand-on experience of using these Most universities offer SE as just one of the courses along with techniques before actual usage in industrial scenario. other Computer Science courses. Graduates from such universities Some universities package the SE course as a System Analysis get to study SE for at most a semester. For some CS students this and Design (SAD) course. This has been observed in Bachelors is the only chances to get familiar with Software Engineering or Master level courses in Science with IT specialization like before starting the career as Software Engineers. M.Sc (IT), B.Sc. (CS) or B.Sc. (IT). SAD course is more of a systems design course and designing of MIS (Management
  • 3. 2.4 Missing Emphasis on SE Research Most of the Indian universities that offer CS courses are teaching universities. IITs, IIITs, and IISc conduct SE research but not on a 4. RESOURCE RELATED ISSUES large scale. Some prominent research centers in Industry are 4.1 Lack of Educational Infrastructure SETLabs, Infosys, and Microsoft Research. The possible reasons India has India currently has around 347 institutes of higher are that Indian academic community is not research oriented. Not education and 16,885 colleges with a total enrollment of over 9.9 many faculty advisors available for SE research. Also, owing to million. These produce around 495,000 technical graduates, the social fabric, most students prefer to join high paying software nearly 2.3 million other graduates and over 300,000 postgraduates development jobs, instead of getting involved with low paying every year [6]. and time consuming SE research. Hence the country lacks the SE IT sector (ADM, product development) absorbs about about 15% research culture and hence misses upon the benefits the research of the total engineering graduates produced by academia. An can bring to services sector in country. upcoming problem is that the sector is growing at a rate of about 30-35% per year. But enrollment in CS courses is not growing at 3. PEDAGOGY ISSUES the same rate. Thus, there is a huge gap is demand and supply 3.1 Non-effective Classroom Teaching which is constantly increasing and is creating a huge pressure on Most of SE courses in India use the traditional class-room based the academic system to produce more employable graduates. teaching pedagogy. But SE is an engineering discipline and NASSCOM already fears that by 2010, the demand supply gap should focus on application of knowledge and skills and other may be around 500,000 graduates [3]. [4]. practical aspects of software development. This is difficult in traditional class-room based environments that are effective for 4.2 Large Class rooms imparting theoretical knowledge, but do not provide chance for hands-on experience or practical training. Thus such Following the software boom, the enrollments in CS courses environments are unsuitable for SE education. Other engineering increased manifolds. Since number of technical institutes that disciplines include a lot of labs, which is amiss in current SE provide quality education is low, hence huge numbers of students education practice in India, especially in university environments. are enrolled in each class. This number may reach to more then 100 for very good institutes. Bigger class sizes may negatively 3.2 Not So-successful Projects affect teaching efficiency as well as are not conducive for non- Most of the professional courses (B.Tech., MCA, BCA) include a traditional methods of teaching, which may be more effective for mandatory project in curriculum to take care of the practice aspect SE education [2]. [1]. [5]. in SE courses. But this project offering faces three major problems. 4.3 Time Constraints Most of the computer science courses include SE as a one First, there is usually a one to two semester gap between attending semester course. This usually means 2-3 hours of classroom the SE course and applying the learning in the project. This is teaching per week for about 16-18 weeks effectively. This is sufficient for students to forget the basic principles by the time hardly sufficient even to cover the complete breadth of a proper they need it. For example, the course is usually offered in the 3rd SE course. Here, we refer to the course breadth guided by or 4th semester, but the project is offered in the last semester SWEBOK [7]. There is not enough time to discuss any topic in- (sixth) in a BCA or MCA course. Similarly, SE course is offered depth. If project training is part of this SE course, then students as in 5th or 6th semester in a B.Tech, but project is usually a 7th or 8th well as faculty get more squeezed for time. semester activity. Second, it is not necessary that students opt for a software 4.4 Lack of Qualified Teachers development project for this project work, and even when it is a Since the software boom, the number of Software Engineering software development project, there is no proper assessment if the course offering increases many folds. But the number of qualified students explicitly performed SE practices or used SE tools and teachers did not. Most of the Software engineering teachers do not techniques. Since not part of assessment, hence students avoid have a considerable experience of software development learning of SE practices, tools and techniques and focus on the themselves. There SE experience is the SE course they took as a end-product (code) that would get them more marks. student. Hence, they can talk about the theoretical aspects, that Third, it has been observed that most of the projects done at too from books. Such teachers cannot discuss the intricacies of under-graduate level are academic in nature and hence do not software development or practice of software development in a represent the problems of scale and complexity of usual software convincing way. development. Most of the SE concepts and practices students When given a choice of teaching a programming course and a learn are more applicable for large scale complex projects. Thus, software engineering course, most teachers opt for the students find it difficult and irrelevant to apply these SE programming course, because they themselves find the SE course knowledge and skills for the academic scale projects, in turn get to be uninteresting to teach and are well aware of the reputation of frustrated and develop the notion that Software Engineering is the SE course among the students. mere theoretical and not useful subject [1]. [6]. [8].
  • 4. 5. OTHERS CHALLENGES AND ISSUES For example, software quality gets affected by decisions taken during early development phases (analysis and design), but many 5.1 Programming is More Attractive than SE Indian software developers are not well versed with these SE Students usually are more interested in programming as compared skills, do not have a clear idea about customer requirements and to Software Engineering. There may be many reasons for this hence though good programmers, the end product may not be of observed phenomenon. One is that students are exposed to desired quality. This affects the brand value of services and programming much earlier then SE. And when they learn SE, products of Indian software industry. A side effect of this is that they feel that following SE would not help them in their programs software verification and validation activities take up a lot of time (which are usually academic in nature and SE they learn is for and are disliked by majority programmers as they are not hard- complex, large scale programs). They also tend to favor core programming activities. programming as they can see quick results unlike SE where results can be intangible and documentation, design kind of jobs 6.3 Addition to Training Problems take up a lot of time when done correctly. Thus students favor Effectively, purpose of academia is to impart the necessary programming over SE and rarely opt for advance courses in SE. programming and SE knowledge and skills to the students and prepare them to take professional responsibilities in industry. In 5.2 Lack on Interest in Higher Education this context, purpose of industrial training should be to train new Indian social fabric is such that students are interested in joining a recruits as per organization specific skills. But the training high paying job as soon as they finish up minimum educational programs include retraining on programming and SE as well requirements. Very few join post-graduate or research programs. because the incoming entry level programmers are not well versed Most of the students join post-graduate programs to improve their with these. brand value in job market. Most industries would prefer the entry level recruits to be billable from day 1 of their joining the project, but a lot of training 6. CONSEQUENCES continues on the project also. Many client organizations do not We discussed various features as observed by the authors in SE like the working of new recruits of their important projects as they education offerings in India. These issues or features cause many are not sure of their quality of work. Hence such recruits are a short and long term people related problems in the software financial liability on the project for a while, because nobody has development industry. Usually multiple issues are linked to a the confidence to give them jobs that demand responsibility. single problem. In this section, we look at various negative effects One important problem is that since the entry level programmers of these characteristics of Indian SE education. lack vital industry skills such as self-learning, and effective communication, they spend more time in training, because these 6.1 Missing the Holistic Picture skills are required for learning newer skills as well. Also, the Most of the employees become task oriented, i.e. their focus is on training programs are bounded with traditional lecture based the given task. They do not understand the context of work and training and performance based assessment that are not less miss the bigger picture. They intend to finish the given work by effective, but also labor intensive and require constant support employing whatever learning they have and do not think about from training staff or mentors. ways to improve the efficiency of task or effectiveness of Another problem is that the since the CS and SE programs deliverables. Thus, they do a task because it has been assigned to throughout the country are not structured or standardized, hence them and do not try to understand the reason why they are doing there has to be an essential training component to bring all the it. This may lead to various issues, such as: entry level recruits to the same level. *Dislike towards work (lack the motivation). This has been Long duration training programs are a necessary evil, as they are observed among the testing staff of a project. Many employees an unnecessary expense of time, effort and money, but develop a dislike to the process part. But companies have to organizations cant do away with them. employ processes for management and branding reasons. This creates un-necessary tensions between the management and 6.4 Inadequately skilled man-power employees, where employees feel that the process is un-necessary This is one of the major challenges being faced by Indian and a burdan. *Employees not working at maximum effectiveness software industry. Indian industry is not only short-supplied with level. *Little contribute to innovation, research or further good programmers [3]. but also with good software engineers. development. *Reluctance to adopt research and innovation Though the entry level employees may be good in programming, coming from academia as they do not understand the benefits. they lack other essential knowledge and skills such as problem 6.2 Low quality Products and Services solving skills, self learning, communication skills, etc. Software product quality is directly affected by the process The industry is providing services other then software quality and the engineer’s view and commitment to quality (By development i.e software maintenance and testing services. But product, we mean a software application of service here). But the current SE syllabus does not cover these topics at all or cover when employees do not understand and possess the essential SE them very briefly. knowledge and skills, the processes they follow are not effective Another issue is that these entry level programmers need to take and the product quality gets affected in return. The engineer’s up various other important roles in the software development life- attitudes towards qualities of a product also affect the decisions cycle in order to climb the value chain. These roles include taken by him, which in turn affect the quality. requirement engineers, software and solution architects, testing leads etc. All these require higher order cognitive skills and self-
  • 5. learning skills to learn and successfully perform the duties. Now knowledge and skills. Thus including problem solving essentially our SE education system neither provides explicit role based means including the facilitation of these higher order cognitive training, nor does it facilitate the development of these higher skills in curriculum. Though it seems like a difficult task, but it is order cognitive skills. Many organizations are of the view that essential, because it is related to the nature of SE. they could find work-around to deal with lack of talent at the Since people work in large teams, hence communication and team entry level positions, but the real problems they would face in work also become important. Another important skill is the self- future is finding rightly skilled personnel for these very specific learning ability. SE and IT are fast evolving fields. Technologies roles. change very fast. It is important that the software engineers can Indian Software industry is developing very fast and many sectors update their knowledge independently. are trying to incorporate newer tools, techniques, methods and SWEBOK [5]. may help to come up with a well balanced and standards as part of their development process. But the developers structured curriculum, especially for a breadth oriented or a first do not possess the skills such as self-learning and analytical skills course in SE [7]. to understand and adopt newer technologies efficiently and effectively. Thus the research and innovation is not getting A proper, engineering focused curriculum would help to tackle heartily absorbed by our industry, thus giving up on chances of the problem of inadequately skilled man-power and would have developing newer areas of competency. subtle but long term positive effect on quality of products and services and hence on growth of Indian Software industry. 6.5 Growth Issues Indian industry is in danger of loosing its edge of low-cost 7.2 Standardization of Curriculum computing and engineering services to newer competitions like The SE curriculum can be divided into two parts: a) The China, and Latin American countries [3]. Thus industry is looking minimum basic or a first course and b) advance topics. Atleast the at newer avenues of growth. This include not only providing the minimum basic part should be standardized by policy makers and basic software development services effectively and efficiently, all education and training institutes should follow this minimal but also adding value to the customer’s business by providing curriculum. This minimum curriculum should include basic SE innovative software solutions. One possible innovation is in knowledge and skills along with problem solving skills. Soft skills Software Engineering tools and applications. Further the can be prescribed as well. Advance topics can be covered as per efficiency and effectiveness would be coming from deeper the requirements. understanding of quality attributes pertaining to software product Such an approach would bring quality control to SE education. and software development process. But this seems like a distant The recruiters can be ensured that the entry level programmer is challenge right now, because our software engineers are very task well versed with the common minimum knowledge and skills. oriented, non-focused on meta-cognitive skills and rarely do focus Accreditations can be developed accordingly for quality control on innovation and efficiency. And a major reason for this is the of educational institutes. way they have been learning. Advantage for training staff is that they can utilize their resources for training for the new entrants on organization specific 7. GUIDELINES requirements instead of basic SE. We believe that many of these problems require conceptual changes in our educational endeavors. We need to prepare a 7.3 Balance between Long-term and Short- learning environment that is conducive for proper alignment of term Goals our long and short term requirements (educational goals, It is essential to strike a balance between both basic SE and expressed as curriculum), and our instruction and assessment. enduring engineering principles and skills and industry or domain These guidelines will help in creating such an environment and specific relevant skills (to achieve short term goals). Study of would help to tackle the negative effect of various SEE challenges contemporary process standards, tools and techniques, vendor that threaten the Indian Software industry. certifications would aid to keep the industry in pace with global advances in practice. Mahanty et al also confirm this in their 7.1 Identification and inclusion of Relevant study [2]. SE skills in SE Curriculum A good balance would help the country in brand building, and Our survey results confirmed our belief that Software Engineering would provide an edge over competitors. A balanced curriculum curriculums require a radical shift from just theory to a well would also help the training departments to focus on more balanced mix of theory (knowledge), and skills. important aspects of training instead of getting involved with The knowledge component consists of SE factual, conceptual, training on basic SE knowledge and skills. procedural and meta-cognitive knowledge (referred as SE 7.4 Pedagogy Reforms knowledge further in this paper). Being an engineering discipline, It has been well proven that traditional class room teaching SE education should include the SE skills, and application of approaches does not work for SE education because they focus on these knowledge and skills, into the curriculum, because theoretical aspects. The teaching pedagogy should be chosen as computing and engineering services essentially mean application per the learning goals and should increase the effectiveness of SE of computing science related knowledge and skills to solve education by making it contextual, interesting and learner centric practical problems in an efficient and effective manner [6]. It is [1]. . There are various teaching approaches that help to inculcate important to note that Problem solving involves deep even the higher order cognitive skills. Such pedagogies should be understanding and analysis of problem, evaluation of alternatives, encouraged. When student’s can see the practical aspects of a decision making and finally application of programming and SE
  • 6. theory or skill in a context, they understand it much better and latest technologies and educate them on the what is expected out useful. This not only helps in a life-long learning, but also handles of graduate students by the industry [4]. the people issues such as interest and motivation for both students It is important to understand that subjects like software and teachers. This motivation and interest are the key to student’s engineering cannot be taught effectively without first hand interest in advance study or research in SE topics. experience. The industry should help the academia by providing Use of approaches such as project-centered learning or case internships for the teachers and also benefit from their wisdom studies can be made role based to help students acquire role based and perspectives. Thus, academia and industry cooperation can expertise. only be a win-win for all the stakeholders and benefit the overall It is important to note that non-traditional pedagogies are effective ecosystem of the IT in the country. only when the assessment is also competence centered and not performance centered, and consider all learning dimensions (application of knowledge and skills, problem solving skills), and 8. CONCLUSIONS not just the theory. In this paper we have tried to address India specific people issues Similarly, curriculum reforms would be effective only when in IT industry in general and software engineering education and teaching pedagogies would be well aligned with these educational training issues in particular. We have tried to make our study as goals. objective as possible by conducting a survey and interviews with senior executives from the software services industry. 7.5 Research Focus SEE scenario in India needs advance courses that may attract We have classified various challenges mainly into curriculum students towards research. The teaching pedagogies can be help related, resource related, and pedagogy related issues. We believe here, as they may help inculcate problem solving skills, a pre- by addressing these challenges properly we will be able to requisite for research. overcome the future bottlenecks that will affect the growth of IT industry. We have suggested a few curriculum, pedagogy, 7.6 Infrastructural Improvements assessment, and infrastructural reforms in the software Lack of proper infrastructure can be a big hindrance to SE engineering education that will aid in overcoming the challenges educational reforms. The number of institutes that offer CS and we have discussed. SE programs should be increased. But they should be regulated for a minimum basic curriculum and facilities. These facilities 9. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS should include well trained teaching staff, access to SE tools and We acknowledge the inputs provided by respondents of our study material. survey. Their thoughtful responses gave us a deeper insight into Another important aspect is allotting adequate time to SE courses. the educational links between industry and academia. One way to do this is by splitting the SE coursework over two consecutive semesters. 10. REFERENCES Motivated, experienced, and well trained teachers are required to [1]. Garg K., Varma V., A Study of the Effectiveness of Case carry out the reforms. Their activities would include design of Study approach in Software Engineering Education, in proper curriculums, conducting learning sessions and proceedings of 20th Conference on Software Engineering assessments, motivation students for deep learning etc. They Education and Training (CSEET 2007), Dublin, July 2007 should be well versed and experienced with software development [2]. Mahanti, R. and Mahanti, P. K. 2005. Software Engineering and should keep their knowledge current. One way is to train the Education From Indian Perspective. In Proceedings of the faculty in industry, or by bringing the practical knowledge to 18th Conference on Software Engineering Education & academia through a system of guest lectures and/or adjunct Training (April 18 - 20, 2005). CSEET. IEEE Computer faculty from industry. Society, 111-117. [3]. NASSCOM McKinsey Study 2005 Executive summary on 7.7 Industry–academia co-operation Extending India's Leadership of the Global IT and BPO Joint efforts of SE Industry and academia can help to alleviate Industries, many of the problems we discussed in section 6. There are several http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.asp initiatives already in place for improving the academia industry x?id=4969 cooperation. This include starting of new era educational [4]. NASSCOM Education Initiatives institutions (like IIITs – the Indian institutes of Information http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/LandingPage.asp Technolgy) focusing on high end research and post-graduate x?id=5794 education. These institutions are expected to come up as public- [5]. Shaw M., Software Engineering Education: A Roadmap, In private-partnerships (PPP) and work very closely with industry to A. Finkelstein (Ed.), The Future of Software Engineering define their vision and goals. (pp. 371-380). New York, NY: ACM Press, 2000. In addition, offering of accreditation programs and “finish the [6]. Shaw M.. Prospects for an engineering discipline of school” certification programs by NASSCOM kind of bodies, software. IEEE Software, pages 15-24, November 1990. mentorship programs where industry partner will provide [7]. Software Engineering Coordinating Committee of ACM and mentorship to the project students, internships in the industry IEEE. Guide to the Software Engineering Body of where the students are exposed to real world and meaningful Knowledge. http://www.swebok.org challenges, train the trainer programs where college and [8]. Tockey S. R. Recommended Skills and Knowledge for university teachers are being trained by the industry experts on Software Engineers. In proceedings of International
  • 7. Conference on 12th Software Engineering Education & training, 1999, pp168-176 [9]. Various SE course syllabi available at http://education4india.com/syllabus/
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