Monday, October 29, 2001		Article

IN the information society, computers and the Internet are playing a dominant role in the formative stage. As we progress, there will be better tools. The computer literates, who are fluent, will be better placed to meet the needs of the information society. The difference between computer literates and illiterates is analogous to the differences we notice between literates and illiterates. We need to stress here that there is a good amount of correlation between the overall health of a nation and the literacy level. To reduce the impact due to the digital divide in the society, speedy remedial measures are required to enlarge the percentage of computer literates.

The industrial scene has been witnessing drastic changes on a far wider scale known to mankind due to the application of IT. The IT-related technologies are networking the companies around the globe and tying the employees into well-knit entities. This will mean keener competition backed up by instant data access, quick decision-making and communicating decisions to the concerned instantaneously. This globalisation of means of production, distribution and marketing has its own impact on skills required as well on educational requirements of employees.

Because of globalisation and fierce competition, the job scenario is changing significantly all over the world. In the early days, in many nations, a government job was an assured lifetime employment. In industrialised nations, working for a large corporation was also considered a lifetime job. Since some years, downsizing and re-engineering have become the norms. Meanwhile, some of the traditional jobs have simply vanished. To cope with this situation, we have been forced to re-educate ourselves continuously.

Hence, the old notion of preparing students to cater to the needs of large companies and government jobs is slowly becoming obsolete. Instead of producing employees to work in government or large corporations, the shift has to be on producing individual entrepreneurs.

They must have the ability to adapt to quick changes and must feel comfortable with the changing technologies. Also, they will have to be educated to work independently and innovatively. Taiwan is an excellent example of a nation becoming a giant due to individual entrepreneurship and small-scale industries.

Education has to emphasise on risk taking to students. For instance, Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, would never have reached the present level but for his risk taking ability. He would have continued in Harvard and would have ended up, if highly successful, as a chairman of some corporation. But that does not match his current stature, legacy, and wealth, which he acquired by risk taking and building Microsoft from scratch.

To some extent though regional languages have been a barrier to the national integration, they have helped persons in the lower strata to become more informed. Slowly, the regional languages are losing their importance because of the changing job scenarios. If one cannot get a good job or market for his or her company’s products in one place or region, what is the use of sticking to one’s regional language? With this ground reality, we have to admit that the good command of English and the ability to communicate in English are gaining importance and widespread acceptance.

The information society has a negative impact of developing individualistic attitudes. This negative trend along with the lack of stress on ethics and values in busy husband and wife working homes have to be made up by education. Otherwise, we will be churning out highly selfish and individualistic robots. This is already noticeable in Western nations with a detrimental effect on the society at large.

The future students have to be trained to cater to the needs of the information society. This change in the requirements from future work force needs corresponding changes in the education system including management, curriculum, and delivery. The courses will have to stress on IT tools. All these add up to the urgent need of restructuring of the education system right from the elementary education level all the way up.

Also there are enormous opportunities for long distance learning all the way in the chain from educating the illiterate to the higher education levels. There will be video interactions and grading the courses.

To cater to the information society, the management and business curriculum have to be re-engineered to cater to the needs of future companies empowered with leading edge technologies. As the future corporations will be globally dispersed, IT-centric, the stress has to be on bringing out IT-savvy business leaders and management experts with a global perspective.

It has to be stressed here that the work culture, the command structure, and the style of functioning will be quite different from the present one. The good news is that some leading management and business schools have already started restructuring the curriculum on these lines.