IT graduates insufficient to meet industry needs - Google MD | Page 7 | Daily News

IT graduates insufficient to meet industry needs - Google MD

 

Sri Lanka’s IT graduates will not be sufficient to meet the needs of the next generation of technologies,a top official from Google India said.

Google India Managing Director Ranjan Anandan speaking at the Sri Lanka Economic Summit 2016 yesterday said that Sri Lanka’s challenge is clearly in terms of numbers.

“The country has a very limited pool of talent of 80,000 IT graduates.While the IT graduates especially passing out from the Moratuwa University is acknowledged as world class they are not sufficient to gear the next generation of technologies.These 4 to 5,000 top level graduates should be trained for the requirement of the next generation technology,”he said at the first session of the second day of the summit.

“We need to take the 4-5000 graduates we have and significantly improve their skills. It is no longer a time for basic programming, We have to expand our computer science programs. It seems only the Moratuwa University has this.This is an investment that is much needed for the country. Sri Lanka also needs programmes on data science. Next generation technologies will be based around data science,” Anandan said.

Countries like India has developed technology industry purely based on numbers. Sri Lanka being a small country numbers are not at our advantage, thus according to Anandan we have to focus on quality on our way forward.

He suggested that the numbers that are necessary for the talent pool is difficult to create in a short time, but by bringing such professionals multiplication possibility of talent would be immense. “Countries are looking at innovative policies this is what attracts them. For an example India has massive drone technology however they are not allowed to fly drones in the country. If Sri Lanka can allocate an area in the country for Drone flying there will be plenty of start up companies coming into Sri Lanka,” he said

In his key note address he also stated that the country should also bet on online education, any skill could be learned through online education thus we should leverage upon online education.

“We should also attract talent.We have talent that has moved away from the country, we need to bring them back.Their experiences in a bigger industry will facilitate our way forward.

“We should also go beyond that. There are many experts out there. We should bring in the best of the best technology professionals from countries like India,” he said. 

 


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