Increasing visibility of an IBA MIS graduate

An unavoidable benefit of putting together a group of seasoned and reasoned CEOs in an academic setting is an unbiased evaluation of ‘the graduate’ that takes the institution’s name into the industry. With IBA, it is a two-fold process with the institution’s extensive business network that prioritizes an IBA graduate often due to IBA’s positioning of its core product, which is a business graduate. But then, is the MIS graduate from IBA positioned similarly?

Well, not as per hiring statistics in the ‘IT job-sphere’ within the industry where recruitment and selection is usually made out of FAST, NUST, GIK and somewhere from IBA MIS lot. Many of the panelists that seconded the above-mentioned were IBA graduates inclined to hiring IBA grads, yet the preference due to organizational loyalty and refinement of skills always went to MIS/CS graduates of educational institutes other than IBA. Simply put, the IBA alumni seated at the ‘CEO Forum’ saw this as IBA graduates teaching training fresh graduates of other institutions as a huge lag.

And this is not all. As far as the faculty is concerned, IBA’s strength is in the CS/MIS domain yet the institution’s market positioning and curriculum is leading in the domain of business studies. Despite this, an IBA MIS graduate is seen as a 2nd –grade business graduate. Putting all pieces together, an IBA MIS graduate is weighed against the 1st rate IBA lot when hiring, and not only MIS/CS graduates of other educational institutes.

Willingness of the Panelists

Humayun Bashir, Country General Manager at IBM Pakistan, proposed extending a internship program to IBA that is run in collaboration with PSEB. It is already in place at various other MIS/CS degree granting institutes where fresh graduates are hired as interns from member educational institutes, and the cost is borne by PSEB. Identifying it as a need at IBM, such collaborative programs are being more rigorously pursued by Oracle and Microsoft.

Zia Babar, CIO at Tameer Bank, also an IBA alumnus, stressed on extending ‘qualitative grooming’ during the 4 years of education an IBA MIS undergrad spends at the institute. As the student is still in the learning phase, this 4 year gap can be effectively tapped by focusing on experimenting with ‘in-house solutions’ and graduates with the right attitude. Agreeing with Humayun Bashir and Zia Babar, Adnan Siddiqui, Country Manager Sales at IBM Pakistan, suggested bringing ‘Teach the Teacher’ program to IBA.

Jawad Farid, CEO at Alchemy Technologies highlighted a point of distinction amongst business graduates and MIS/CS graduates that should be the gauge when grooming graduates with the right attitude and desired technical skills, and that is the critical thinking/problem-solving skills that places a CS/MIS graduate above average.

According to him, the way to go about it by first studying the gap accordingly:

Gap untapped – What is required in the industry?
1. Conducting an industry-wide survey?
2. Increasing the number of real-class projects (not necessarily paper-based) during the term of the project; the last 20% of the project shouldn’t be left undone as it requires 80% of work.
3. Facilitating an environment for student to fail while he/she is still at school; the student should be allowed to start something while still at school.

Picking up from there, Dr. Ishrat Husain, Dean and Director at IBA pointed out presence of a ‘Center for Entrepreneurship’ at IBA that has entered into a partnership with Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at Pennsylvania University, and Jehan Ara is expected to sit on the advisory board for the Center for Entrepreneurship’ at IBA.

As the discussion proceeded, revised curricula for CS programs were presented to the floor that scrutinized it for relevance and rigor, to be discussed in follow-up articles on the ‘CEO Forum’ at IBA.