Shallow Pools

With the new academic year under way, countrywide college enrolments are in its last phase. The science sector has some interesting insights to offer, if the trend in Delhi University (DU) is any indication. The slowdown, indeed a downturn, in the information technology (IT) sector is beginning to have its impact. In DU, for instance, the (four year) professional courses of Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) and Bachelor of Information Sciences (BIS) were scrapped last year. Instead, a non-professional course, B.Sc (Honours) in computer science, has been introduced but its restructured syllabus still falls short of giving an all-round grounding in the sciences.

As a result, the explosive increase in the number of entrants into these courses, evident till 2000, is showing a drop. This could have a positive impact in the basic sciences. If one looks at cut-off percentages, they are about the same as last year as against the annual drop of about 3 per cent seen for some years—an indication that roughly the same top percentile of students are coming into sciences this year too. IT's lure is wearing out, biotechnology is the new mantra. However, it may suffer the same fate as IT in a few years' time.

Unfortunately, wisdom dawned on the UGC a bit late, after several hundred students have had their careers ruined thanks to its ill-conceived courses. The BIT and BIS students who passed out last year are still on the benches today. This isn't surprising when even many M.Techs from prestigious institutions such as IITs and the IISC have not been called in after being given employment letters by big IT companies like Wipro and Infosys. A couple of years ago, before the IT crash, nearly 90 per cent of M.Techs had found IT-related jobs, regardless of their basic discipline. In IISC, between '96 and '99, 243 out of a total 273 students graduating went into the IT sector. In 1998-99, 239 of the 273 IIT Bombay M.Techs and 202 of the 211 IIT Madras M.Techs found jobs in the IT sector.

Unlike the students of IITs and IISC, who have an all-round grounding, students of the new-fangled "vocational" courses such as BIT and BIS, which were founded on the premise of IT as an end in itself, have nowhere to go but pick up low-end jobs in software companies. Lack of an all-round foundation in other sciences has ensured that. Even their grounding in IT was bound to be weak, with courses having only about 0.8 teachers per 75 students (according to a study) as against the desired number of 8-10. The new honours course too suffers on this count.

The students' exodus to IT began in the early '90s with the software industry's explosive growth. Though the scientific community expressed concern at the trend and higher science education became 'white paper' topics at national academies, no policy level initiatives were taken to buckle it. Indeed, IT-based professional courses at the undergraduate level were introduced in spite of such concerns. The National Science Talent Search (NSTS) Scheme for undergraduate students is a good indicator of the general declining interest in the sciences. Last year, the NSTS could award only 12 per cent of the 60 scholarships as the rest of the candidates did not meet requirements. At IIT, Bombay, for the first time there was no Ph.D scholar for basic science last year.

The scientocracy woke up only when the situation became critical. In '99, the department of science and technology began the Kishore Vigyan Protsahan Yojana (KVPY) to identify bright students at the Class X and XII level and award fellowships (about 50 at each level every year) but it's had limited success so far. The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bombay, concerned about the falling standards in its Ph.D programme, has for the last two years, begun conducting campus interviews in January to pick bright M.Sc students.

But this cream, say the top ten percentile, should not be the main concern since they are interested anyway. It's another matter that they may go abroad at the Ph.D or post-doctoral level. The concerted efforts now should be to inculcate interest at the school level and improve standards among science graduates.

Now, even key sectors like space, defence and atomic energy are not getting the right people for their programmes. It's affecting the IT sector too, because development of quality application software for other S&T activities requires people well-grounded in those respective disciplines. The country is importing a huge amount of software for use in core industrial sectors. In a few years, if not already, universities and colleges will be faced with an acute shortage of competent teaching personnel.

Unfortunately, the policy makers do not seem to be overly concerned about this impending crisis. There is only talk of increasing R&D investment up to 2 per cent of the GDP, little realising that a skilled workforce to manage that R&D is in short supply. Money is no longer the issue. There is a lack of innovative R&D ideas or even quality basic science projects. The DRDO, for instance, has money to give for good projects but has not been able to find enough competent people and worthwhile project proposals.