IT companies are in the race for competitive excellence, wherein there is a strong linkage between knowledge and competitive advantage and planning for the future is the key to success. This 'future' will be 'IT knowledge workers'—those professionals who are abreast of the latest development in the rapidly changing IT field. IT corporates are consequently nurturing their association with educational institutions—both management and technical. It becomes mandatory for the IT industry to appreciate the significance of educational institutions in achieving this objective along with the augmentation of fresh human capital.

The foremost need for IT companies to tie-up with academia is to access the fresh pool of talent. It is important for IT companies to be associated with reputed technical educational institutions to ensure a steady inflow of technically qualified software programmers at the entry-level.

Bhaskar Subramaniam, executive vice-chairman, Servion Global Solutions says, "We operate in a very niche domain—Customer Interaction Management (CIM) and there are very few institutes in India offering courses with skill sets required in this industry. As a result, there is an acute shortage of skilled resources in our domain. Most of the fresh engineering /computer science graduates have practically zero skills in our particular domain and need to be trained extensively when they join the company. In such a scenario, our industry-academia collaboration to develop tailor-made curriculum can help bridge the demand-supply gap and make fresh graduates industry ready."

This is becoming critical considering the huge requirements of the IT and BPO sectors and increase in the outsourced software development activity from overseas market. Shantanu Prakash, director, Educomp Solutions, remarks, "It gives us access to a ready pool of candidates matching our needs.

Also, because they are fresh, they are more open and can be moulded and groomed as per the company's work culture and goals. It is a good idea to have an association since it allows a company to tap a large pool of candidates for entry-level positions, which most companies have in plenty." Jayant Kulkarni, executive director, Harbinger Knowledge Products, voices similar thoughts, "While experienced professionals continue to be in demand, the intake of freshers is also a strong focus in our organisation. We are keen to maintain a healthy rookie ratio as this fresh talent is very good to mould, and are on a high learning curve."

Tie-ups with academia may not help in fulfilling the demand and supply gap. It is important to nurture a healthy IT industry-academia relationship to sustain the growth of an industry and enhance the contribution of the academia.

The industry-academia partnership primarily helps educational institutions to align their curricula with industry requirements. It also helps students by preparing them in advance to take the real world challenges head on, as they join the industry bandwagon. Says, Padmaja Krishnan, director-marketing,planning and research, CSC India, "The difference in the competency and quality of students entering tier I/tier II vis-à-vis the rest of the institutions (their marks and grades are quite close) is not huge. But, there is still a significant difference in the quality of churn out. Towards reducing the demand and supply gap we need to focus on improving the quality of both technical and management institutions in general, but with particular focus at the lower-end of the pyramid, without losing much time."

This process can certainly be enhanced through regular interactions or exchanges between academia and industry, both for structured education (by aligning and improving the curricula to meet industry needs) and for the unstructured education by providing much needed work experience to students. Having said that, it is crucial that in this period the management trainee is able to co-relate his own goals with the larger goals of the company.

The IT industry believes that educational institutions are the foundation and pillars for their future business. Being a knowledge industry, the quality of the education system and how it can be aligned to industry needs (which are in turn determined by the end-customer needs) can certainly, have a direct impact on the ability, agility and the success rates for satisfying the end-customers. "Our current system forces the industry and students to bear the burden of bridging the gap between industry and academia to a large extent."