Study of tertiary IT education in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is giving more emphasis on software indllstry_ Hliman resollrce is a very vital input for solhvare induslry, Developing manpower for software industry is the first step to bUIld capabllity for software development. It is important to understand Ihe software development life cycle to develop appTOpriale manpower for the industry. The different stages of the t)1,ical software development projeet are " busincss I user requirements identification, system requirements identi fieation, design 0 f so n.ware archllecture, coding and testing, integration ,I system test, user certification I acceptance test and implementation Lookmg al the stages in software development, it is apparent that hardcore programming is required at only one stage of the process. For the other stages diffcrent kind of manpower is required. Recent government plan to dcvelop 10,000 progranlmers each year would be a myopic plan. This study looked at the experiences of the sofnvarc fimls and solieitoc1 their opinion on the profile ofmanpowcr rcquircmcnt.ror a competent IT industry. It also looked allhe tenim)' leveiLT courscware of the countl;es like US and India where n industry is already strong, The study then compared the tertiary IT courses of Bangladesh with that of the US and India to suggest possiblc ways and means to develop improve the tertiary IT education in the country to bring it to the standard of US or India and at the same time can meet the dcmand of the local software industry. The study carried out a survey on the Bonware firms in the country and tried to identify !helr expectation of human resources for the IT industry. A web-based sun-ey was also carried out to look a! the IT programs of the countries, which have slrong IT industries, The findings from the local software firm survey as wcll as findings from web-based survey of IT programs were compared with IT educalJonal programs of Bangladesh. Keeping the govemment policy in consideration It was found in the survey that the country should develop much more numher of IT maupower than the prcscnt target of 10000 a ycar, 11was also found that the country should also develop IT manpower like system analy~!~, project managers, IT product marketing persolUlel ete. in appropriate proportion. In academic tcrm, it was found that the IT cducational programs in the country must incorporate more courses on management and systems study, Universities and institutes running computcr science programs must increasc their course contenl to develop better-equippcd graduates.