India turning away from tech

Universities in India's most IT-intensive state are seeing seats in computer science classes go empty as more students opt for general science and engineering degrees.

Institutes of higher education across the state of Bangalore, where many US-based and Indian IT firms have set up software development houses, have seen either sharply reduced IT course intakes or have been forced to shut entire classes, according to a Press Trust of India report.

Factors causing the drop in intake, a trend which began in 2001, include the bursting of the tech bubble as well as the growing popularity of life sciences, said the report.

In addition, the boom of the late '90s caused in oversupply in IT courses, Bangalore University vice chancellor M S Thimmappa was quoted as saying.

Elsewhere in Asia, the prevalence of on-the-job training offered by human resource-hungry IT firms has seen many science and engineering graduates becoming IT professionals after entering the job market.