CII student fair gets underway

CHANDIGARH, May 8: The three-day international conference-cum-exposition on Education and Careers - Alternatives, which began here today was...

CHANDIGARH, May 8: The three-day international conference-cum-exposition on Education and Careers – Alternatives, which began here today was inaugurated by UT Home-cum-Education Secretary, Anuradha Gupta.

According to her, Alternatives, as the name suggests, provides students with an oppurtunity to know various career options available to them in India and abroad. She said that the department of employment should also be regularly organising such fairs for their benefit.

The objective of the exposition is to make education more relevant to the needs of the workplace and providing feedback to the students and academicians. Highlighting the importance of holding such an event, Piyush Behl of CII, said that the conference aims at telling the students about the career oriented courses of study which they consider after class 12th, instead of the regular degree courses.

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Organised for the first time in the city, Alternatives will be featuring special career seminars for the students, besides the exhibition giving information about various computer and management courses in foreign universities.

Prominent exhibitors at the fair include British Council Division, APTECH Ltd, Softspec Computer Centre, First Computers, Box Hill Institute of Technical and Higher Education, Pearl Academy of Fashion and ITFT.

Later, addressing a career seminar in software technology, Pramod Khera, Executive Director of APTECH, said that career options in the field of software for the next millennium are broadly categorised as Software Engineering and creative applications including Multimedia, Internet, Web page Designing and Software Export which mainly includes development on state-of-the-art software.

Khera said that presently, the perspective of the IT industry is such, that new entrants are expected to have high knowledge and skill levels.

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Khera also said that exposure to concepts such as enterprise resource planning and their impact on resource planning in organisations, herald the arrival of “Techno Managers”.

While addressing the session on career options in multimedia, Iqbal Singh, Principal Design Engineering Head, Department of IT, Center for Electronic Design and technology (CEDT), Mohali, mentioned the importance of multimedia.Singh highlighted some of the problems with today’s multimedia creation like costly equipment, scarcity of skilled professionals and high cost of production.

Singh also informed the students about the Multimedia Promotion Programme, an activity under National Information Infrastructure, which is promoted by DoE. Government of India. Earlier, speaking on the occasion, A Didar Singh, MD Punjab State Electronics Development and Production Corporation Ltd said that IT was the driving force for economic growth for the industry in the country.

Citing statistics, Singh stated that in the past year software exports from the country witnessed a growth rate of 55 per cent. He said that during 1996-97, while the software exports were worth Rs 6,000 crore, they were expected to touch Rs 56,000 crore in 2002.

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The software industry presently employs 9 lakh people which is projected to grow to accommodate 21 lakh peple in the next five years. Singh said that establishment of Software Technology Park in Mohali expected an investment of Rs 5000 crore, which would generate employment and career options in this field. More than 150 participants including students, parents and educationists attended the sessions and went around the exhibition. They also showed interest in knowing about the educational opportunities abroad.