Hyderabad, In a bid to upgrade college curriculum and faculty skills in sync with industry requirements, Oracle India Pvt Ltd has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Institute for Electronic Governance (IEG), a non-profit organization set up by the department of information technology & communication, Andhra Pradesh. As part of its academic initiative, Oracle has provided a grant of $114 million to support the Jawahar knowledge centres (JKCs) in the State.
Under the MoU, Oracle will provide software and curriculum to 60-odd JKCs in the State, With this, the in-kind value of Oracle's total software grants to education institutions in India is over $250 million, Krishna Dhawan, MD, Oracle India said after signing the MoU. JKC is an initiative of IEG that attracts best students from all over the State offering best guidance, content and opportunities to address challenging problems.
From its end, Oracle will grant software licenses for Oracle 10g database, application server and developer suite besides providing faculty training to the network of JKC across the State. The Oracle academic initiative reaches an estimated 17,300 students across the country in 100 well-known engineering and management institutions including IITs and IIMs.
The JKCs strive to fulfill the objective of promoting industry-institute-government interaction offering better opportunities to students, Subba Rao Ghanta, IEG president said.
According to a study, in the IT industry, there is a shortage of skilled people and the demand is expected to surge to touch 2.5 million by 2010.
Presently, there are over 280 enginnering colleges in the State, out of which only 2.5% get employment thus creating a wide gap between the industry and the academia. JKC aims to bridge the divide and bring in skill improvement among the students, Ratna Prabha, principal secretary,IT & C said.
``As part of long-term measure, the State government is planning to revamp the syllabus at different levels and the activities at JKC will take care of immediate short-term measure,'' she said. About 2,000 candidates directly from the engineering colleges and 10,000 from JKC would benefit through this initiative, she added. In fact, the State government is now working with 40-odd IT Companies including IBM, Infosys, etc which are partnering in such academic-alliance programmes.