I was invited for a guest lecture to the computer science students of the “Hindustan Institutions“, Coimbatore. The head of computer science department and my friend Rangaraj had been discussing for quite some time about collaborating education institutions with the industry, for the students and teachers to get some perspective of current trends.

The problem that exists today in India is the wide gap in what is taught in colleges (only with respect to computer science related courses) versus what is expected in the software industry. On one side is the outdated syllabus that majority of the subjects are either not being used in the industry or outdated. On the other side is the lack of training, grooming and guiding students on the expected soft skills when they enter the industry. While we could keep complaining about the education system and point finger at the Government, it is not going to solve this problem. We cannot blame the teachers in the colleges as well, because they may not be exposed or aware of the industry needs. The ideal solution is the industry start collaborating with the education institutions. All of us have gone through our system and faced the reality of expectation mismatch when a fresh pass out from college joins a software company.

So my friend and I decided, we would kick start this process and start off an awareness session. So I prepared a mindmap on points that students should focus on the technical side as well as from the soft skills side and work towards those points. I also covered some points on preparing for interviews.

In fact this session is an awareness program not just for the students but also for the lecturers. These points are only triggering points and are not solutions. This presentation is a starting point, more of such sort has to happen focusing deeply on each of the points I was mentioning and definitely this industry can help the education institutions to guide and build a better tomorrow for the students as well as the industry.

Click on the photo for a larger image of the mind map. Have a look at some photos taken during the lecture in Flickr.

This post is part of “Foundations” series of posts.