Odisha HRD

Carnegie Mellon’s program and plans for India

September 13th, 2010

Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburg is one of the top universities in US; especially its Computer science department is ranked among the top 5 (sometimes in top 3) in US. It offers Masters programs in Software Engineering in partnership with various international institutions. One such partner is SSN School of advanced software engineering in Chennai. Following is an excerpt from their overview page: 

The SSN School of Advanced Software Engineering (SSN SASE) has been established by Padma Bhushan Dr. Shiv Nadar – Chairman, HCL Technologies Ltd., to bring world class education to India and make it available to meritorious students of all economic strata.

The home page of the institution says the following:

Despite the Recession, all of MSIT students got jobs – At an average salary of US $95,000! Living expenditure in CMU reduced by Half.

Carniegie Mellon also has another program that students from India can take. Following is an excerpt from a report in redherring magazine.

At an Internet cafe in Delhi, India, up to 80 students sit pensively studying their computer screens. For some, it’s just like any other Internet cafe, but for others it’s a virtual university where they can take computer science courses offered by Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

The new educational initiative is a collaboration between Sterling Infotech, an Indian Internet service provider, and Carnegie Technology Education, a subsidiary of the university, and is part of an ambitious program to train more than 100,000 Indian computer programmers at 100 locations over the next three years.

It also gives us a glimpse of the changes rippling through education. Universities with expertise in one area can now prepare, monitor, and grade courses given under local supervision in an entirely different location.

"The education model is more like, say, a Microsoft, Novell, or Cisco certification program than a traditional university course," says Allan Fisher, president and CEO of Carnegie Technology Education. "We build computer-based training courses drawing on the intellectual resources of the university, but local instructors [in India] monitor, administer, and assist the students."

The courses offered range from the basic, like software engineering, to the advanced, like object-oriented programming. "However, unlike software vendor training programs that would offer courses in Visual Basic or Java, we teach students how to work with any object-orientated language," says Mr. Fisher.

…Unlike many online education institutions, Carnegie Technology Education not only designs the course but also trains and certifies the instructors and monitors both the teachers’ and students’ progress.

Carnegie Mellon computer-science faculty members design the courses and personally select and train the local tutors who will teach the students at the partner institution. "The tutors then go back to the partner institution and teach the courses; we monitor their progress, and they have access to our computer-science faculty member to assist them with any difficulties," says Mr. Fisher.

If the student completes five courses successfully, they get a Carnegie Technology Education certificate in computer programming; if they complete ten courses, they get a certificate in software engineering.

But it’s not cheap. Each course module costs the Indian student $180, nearly three months’ earnings for those on minimum wage. However, Sterling Infotech offers students their money back if they do not get a job within three months of completing the course.

Entry Filed under: Foreign Universities in India,Learning from others