BENGALURU: Demand for science and economic graduates for the country’s IT sector is increasing with the rise of Big Data Analytics, reports Economic Times. IT services companies as well as consultancies have identified that the analysis skills that these graduates developed in tune with their curricula could be used in the realms of tech services that involves big data analysis. "We are seeing more BSc graduates being preferred for data analytics roles because they have those required skills. Hiring is more off-campus than on campus," said Sangeeta Gupta, SVP at industry body Nasscom. 

The salary package offered to science and economic graduates are higher than what their engineering counterparts draw for the same job profiles. The entry level salaries of economics or statistics graduates range from Rs 4-7 lakh annually compared with the 3.5 lakh that engineering graduates draw. IT staffing firm Teamlease accords that at the middle level, the pay ranges from Rs 12-15 lakh per year. Economics or statistics graduates are preferred for the latter while for the former positions, BSc graduates are preferred.

Last year an internal survey by Nasscom indicated that about 5-6 percent of the headcount in the industry was from no engineering fields. Premier IT FIRMS SUCH AS Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services run programs specially meant to hire and train BSc and MSc graduates. Teamlease estimates that over 1,00,000 vacancies would be created in the field of data analytics by next year as research firm IDC forecasts that the global big data technology and service market will grow at about 26.4 percent compound annual growth rate to $41.5 billion through 2018 which is about six times the growth rate of the overall information technology market. "The industry is moving to more skill-based hiring, rather than just engineers for everything," said Nasscom's Gupta.

“The industry is looking at ‘somebody who understands data and technology’," said Sudipta Ghosh, PwC's India data and analytics partner. PwC, who in the past hired engineers, CAs or MBA graduates for such roles now give more preference to people from science background with more data interpretation skills. People employed as data analysts says that demand for the profession has raised. They also mention the lack of flexibility in syllabi taught at colleges. "If education was more flexible in India, I'd have studied biology and math to use stats in medical/health analytics," quotes an analyst who had done her BSc statistics graduation in India and proceeded to pursue further studies at London School of Economics. Companies are also banking upon BSc graduates for roles such as infrastructure management which are generally allotted to engineering freshers.

On the other hand, the Indian engineering education scene, as pointed out by many is in a state of constant deterioration owing to outdated syllabus, lack of practical emphasis, career mismatch and a bubbled hype held by the society. As metro-man E Sreedharan once quoted, “Mass-produced engineers from private colleges with no quality are of no use to US.” Relievingly, several data analysis based courses prepared by corporations are available for free on platforms like Udacity.com from which all graduate alike could sharpen their skill sets.

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