Job opportunities for IT graduates diminishing
KARACHI- The graduates of the Information Technology (IT) and computer science are facing hardships in getting well-rewarding jobs even after spending Rs 0.1 million per year on tuition fees. “Our batch comprised of over 100 students which passed-out last year from the University of Karachi and after six months only 35 students are employed,” said Azim Abid Sultan a student at the department of Computer Science.
He said mostly the students of his class preferred to remain unemployed in wake of the low-remunerating jobs offered to them by the many software houses in the metropolis. “My unemployed class fellows are now actively weighing their option to emigrate to the United States of America for MS degree in computer science and software technology,” he added.
He opined that graduating students passing with a proper computer science and software degree should start their career from a software house, irrespective of the size of software house. “But the medium-sized software houses have inclined to hire fresh graduates as programmers on low remuneration of Rs 4,000 per month,” he added.
A number of recently-passed graduates of the University of Karachi and well-reputed private IT institutes, when interviewed by this correspondent, have expressed similar difficulties in searching a well-paid job in the software industry. They viewed that mass arrival of IT and software engineers every year caused in the significant devaluation and depreciation of appointments at these houses.
The graduating students implied that after spending minimum of Rs 20,000 as tuition fee of each semester, they expect employment of at least of Rs 15,000 per month. If the input of fresh software brains continued unabated, they feared that average salary packages would further decline.
“Even there are private institutes imparting degree-level IT education and running classes in two shifts while on average such institutes produce a batch of 100 software graduates every year,” opined a student. Students expressed that abundance of job-seeking graduates provides opportunities to the software houses to exploit their mettle and skills on low wages.
Survey by this scribe also revealed that average salary for the promising and brilliant IT graduates had also substantially declined with the slump in the software market. “Some one year back talented and qualified four year-degree holders in computer science were getting a salary of Rs 15,000 per month on average but now they are getting Rs 10,000 from relatively big software houses backed by giant business houses,” said another student.
The software houses have also been facing decline in business and IT projects since the September 11 phenomenon which among other industries also plagued the IT and software market globally. Software houses hire fresh graduates on project basis, whenever a software house is assigned with a major task of designing and production of software, they employ fresh workforce according to the requirement of the project. In this scenario, where the companies are awaiting big IT projects, how could new graduates be employed on handsome salaries.
Source: The News
Date:6/24/2002
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