China formalizes its training of IT professionals

China formalizes its training of IT professionals

By Huang Xin

As shown in the latest Report on the Market of IT Education and Training services in China issued by CCID Consulting, there exists a gap of at least 500,000 software talents in the China market each year and such a gap is still increasing by degrees at a rate of 20 percent each year. It is such a reason that has resulted in the situation that the overall scale of the market for IT education and training services in China has been upgraded by a large margin with the pattern in the market getting to be more mature and more professional after its development of years.

The domestic software industry is developing at a miraculous rate. Data from CCID Consulting show that the scale of China's software outsourcing service market increased by 55.4 percent year on year to US$1.43 billon in 2006. Subsequently, there appeared a sharp shortage of software talents, which has already become one of the most important bottlenecks restricting the development of China's software industry. The shortage of software talents is not only represented in quantity but also by an inconsistency in quality. The fact that software education lags behind the actual demands in the society has led to the failure for talents cultivated to meet the actual demands of various enterprises.

Take the Potential Development Plan jointly launched by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Microsoft in November 2005 for example. An important item in the Plan is that Microsoft will work together with the industry and educational institutions to cultivate software talents, promote research, development and innovation. So far, Microsoft has launched a series of schemes to cultivate software talents together with governmental departments and educational institutions so as to promote research, development and innovation.

On March 8, 2007, Microsoft formally built up its global strategic cooperating partnership with Zheda Innovation Internet Co., Ltd. and once again, talent training became one of the keystone contents for such an all-around cooperation. As said by Hong Deming, General Manager of Microsoft Greater China's Department of Global Strategic Cooperating Partnership, the cultivation of software talents has become a rather important mission for Microsoft in China and Microsoft will accelerate its attempts in such an aspect in the future. He also said frankly that there were still quite a few phases for the domestic software talent training to experience, it was absolutely impossible to achieve such an objective in two or three days and more efforts should be made.

On the ceremony held for the subscription of the memorandum on the global strategic cooperating partnership between Microsoft and Zheda Innovation Internet Co., Ltd., Hong Deming expressed that the very reason for Microsoft to choose Zheda Innovation Internet Co., Ltd. as one of its few global strategic cooperating partners was that Microsoft appreciated its advantage in terms of talents as it could rely on Zhejiang University. Data from CCID Consulting show that five private brands engaged in education have seized 50 percent of the market as far as IT talent training was concerned; the vitality in the market for private IT training can be seen from such a fact.

As a leading software enterprise, Neusoft Group Ltd. already realized its own shortcoming in software talent education for a long time and it made a very strategic policy - to invest a lot of funds and take the lead to set up a software institute in the manner of cooperation between enterprises and educational institutions. In 2005, the Neusoft Information Institute was set up in Dalian; another software institute was founded in Nanhai, Guangdong Province one year later and a third one was set up in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Now, there are already 20 thousand students in those three institutes.

This year, Neusoft Group Ltd. will invent and set up an internship base for college students and set a term of one year for the internship so as to make it possible for students to start their practice pressing close to the market in a systematic and in-depth manner before they go to work. Also, Neusoft Group Ltd. has also increased cross-disciplinary contents in the curricular education so as to make education more efficient. And the ultimate objective is to greatly cut down the period of time for students to get them transformed so that they can work in enterprises.