Taking up IT for a career? May not be such a good idea

ComputerWeekly recently ran a story on the UK's Higher Education Statistics Agency survey showing that 10% of UK IT graduates were still unemployed several months after graduation(see this). In comparison, 8% of graduates of creative arts and communications were unemployed. The average level of unemployment among all graduates of the academic year 2006-07 was 6%.

Note also the statistics of students all around our country taking up studies for Engineering or Technology in computer science or Information Technology. Are there enough jobs for these folks? What do they really know? (not just in IT but anything else even in general?). Is it really good for India to have such a large scale monoculture of trade skills? Who is going to build our buildings and cars if everybody knows just how to code in Java?

Starting Out

I came to Indore in Sept. of 2007 and was happy to find that there was already existing a Linux users group and they were to host an event (http://linuxindore2007.com. Subsequently I attended one of the meetings and met the key person: Prabhat.

I met Prof. Shubhamoy Dey of the IIM Indore. We had a good time discussing computer
security and other things.

I am designing a curriculum for an M.Tech program on cyber crime. It has had one round of feedback from my friends. This is intended to be a two year course without necessarily having to have a computer science background. Sometime soon it should be ready.