Great Concern: My take on it

Here is my reply to the thread:

I'm sure you ladies and gentlemen's time is precious, but yet again, I am drifting into a lengthy reply. Forgive me for that.
It is indeed a great concern. I am confused with to the state that the society has gone into. I believe that Asad saheb has very rightly said that the IT industry is maturing. I have not yet met one young person or parent who is optimistic about jobs in the IT, especially software development/testing area. I am stumped as to why. People are opting for Electrical and even Mechanical or Industrial Engineering over Computer Engineering. While a lot needs to be done to correct our power generation and distribution network, I have yet to see any signs of progress in that area.
I personally evangelise heavily wherever I go that there are unfilled jobs in the industry and there is need for good skilled graduates.
On the part of NED, I am sorry to say that our recent graduates are job hopping hopelessly with very short span jobs, and some students even have aspirations of a four to six month job period before they get a student visa and go to secure their Masters degree. We can debate on that, too, endlessly, but we'd be drifting from the point here.
I believe the IT sector will need to show its presence and come out beyond the seth sahib rokra chaap stereotype through activities in which they show the society they are very much there, live and kicking. Roadshows of sorts, maybe.
University projects would have been a great idea, but I must admit myself that one was offered to me, albeit a little bit late, but I offered it to the class and no one picked it. Why an industry's real project lost its lure, is beyond my comprehension. I would think that consistent and volumenous projects with academia might attract students. For instance, publicizing some killer applications jointly being developed by an academic institute's final year students and a certain IT firm. Once again, I'm not sure how effective I can be, but for sure, it should not be limited to my institution anyway.
And, of course, to improve tunout quality, teacher's internships is another very good idea coined by PonderAlliance. The initiative again, must come from the academia with faxes being sent to IT industries seeking internship opportunities for their faculty members. While you can not do much about intake by institutions below a certain intellectual level, with the rest, a good and skillful teacher might do better than we presently are.