University of Pune gives job fair fillip to traditional IT courses

With hiring in the information technology (IT) sector slackening and engineering students being preferred in campus recruitment, admissions to traditional IT courses like BCA, MCA, BSC (Computer Science) and MSC (Computer Science) have seen a slump. To tackle this situation, the University of Pune will organise a job fair for students pursuing traditional IT courses. Engineering students will be strictly kept out. The recruitment drive will be held in the Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering (PCCoE) on June 5.

"We are getting feedback from UoP-affiliated colleges that admissions in computer application and computer science degree courses are going down, mostly because of the current slowdown in the IT sector. Students now prefer to pursue graduation in pure science subjects rather than securing admission in IT-related courses, where the fees are more. Hence, we have organised this recruitment drive, which will focus on IT-related courses," said Dr Pandit Shelke, director, UoP students welfare department.

Prof Shitalkumar Rawandale, Dean (Industry-Institute Interaction), PCCOE said, "Yes, this year we are paying special attention to students pursuing traditional IT-specialised courses. Nearly 700 students from around 60 colleges are expected to participate in Thursday's drive. We held a similar drive last week."

Engineering wins
Engineering colleges in the city, however, have seen high recruitment from IT firms. "In a campus recruitment drive held in August 2013, in which four top IT companies had participated, as many as 540 out of 660 students from our college received job offer letters on the first day itself," said Prof Sandeep Meshram, placement officer, College of Engineering Pune.
Dr Deepak Shikarpur, an IT evangelist said, "It is true that IT companies prefer students with an engineering background for the obvious reason that top scorers in Std XII usually take up engineering courses. Traditional IT courses, thus, lose out in the recruitment race."