HEADLINES
JOBS
COM:PORT
POLICY POLICE
ARCHIVES

NIIT to prepare syllabi for IIIT-B

The final syllabi will, however, incorporate industry inputs in order to ensure that the curriculum is tailor-made to suit the market.

T O D A Y

• The Mother of all ISPs • IIIT-B picks NIIT • CSI-ESS '99 • Y2K guidelines for CAs

It will also be used for the satellite IIIT centre to be set up at Mysore.

Top Karnataka officials have been quoted as saying that the institutes are expected to commence functioning from February.

The IIITs would begin by offering six-month postgraduate courses. At a later stage, possibly a year from now, the IT school would move up to courses of excellence.

These would be three to four-year courses leading to a graduate degree on the lines of what is being offered by IIIT-Hyderabad.

This gestation period would be utilised to develop the required infrastructure, such as buildings, a larger faculty and hardware.

NIIT has been in the business of software training since 1982 and has expanded its operations to over 600 education centres in 15 countries that include the US, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Kuwait and Mauritius.

The governing council of the IIIT met earlier this month and examined one of the initial versions of the draft that is expected to be finalised soon.

Commerce and Industry Ministry of Karnataka Principal Secretary N Vishwanathan chairs the council. IT includes Information Secretary Sunjay Gupta, Infosys chief Narayana Murthy, Compaq chief Som Mittal and Wipro Infotech chief Ashok Soota.

They have already started scouting for a full-time CEO for the IIIT.

The CEO, who is expected to be an old IT industry hand, not in terms of just experience but dynamism and will to explore the new framework, will be initially inducted for one year.

But, based on the performance and inclination to shoulder the responsibility, the person may be retained for a three to four-year term.

Once the top person is engaged, he or she will be expected to assist the governing council to recruit experienced full-time and visiting faculty members.

Officials disclosed that already many leading IT corporations have offered to depute their experts on a visiting faculty capacity to the IIITs and chip in with other training tools.

Since it is an industry-driven exercise with necessary catalytic push from the state government, the fee structure is proposed to be pegged at affordable Rs 25,000 for the six-month course.

According to officials, the fee structure is aimed at recovering the actual operational costs and not the seed capital invested by the industry and the state government.

Until the IIIT campus comes up, the school will function from the Information Technology Park Limited premises in Whitefield, Bangalore. Here there would be about 100 workstations that could accommodate about 500 students.

Similarly, Mysore, which is being promoted by the state government as the second IT hub in the region, will also train about 200-300 candidates.

The actual institute is expected to come up on 100 acres, identified in Hessarghatta near the city. The state government has decided to fork out Rs 100 million towards establishing the centre of technical excellence.

- Compiled from the Indian media

Tell us what you think