Outsourcing IT Education

The latest thing America is offshoring to India: U.S. business-technology know-how. Virginia Tech is teaming with one of India's top business schools, the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, to offer a master's degree in IT.

The institute, based in Mumbai--formerly known as Bombay--characterizes the program as offering "high-class U.S. education" that's customized to address the needs of the IT industry in Asia. The program offers two tracks: a full-time program for students and a blended, on-campus-Web-based learning program for working professionals. The curriculum includes 15 courses, 10 taught by Virginia Tech faculty and five by institute personnel.

As their country's economy grows, the Indian educators recognize the need to go beyond providing IT commodity services such as coding and offer more sophisticated business-tech services. "Information technology has created a profound influence on our lives in general and management practice in particular," a statement on the institute's Web site says. "The IT industry in India, earlier focused largely on providing IT services globally, is now venturing into product development, business process outsourcing, and IT-enabled services in a big way. We are seeking to create a unique combination of educational programs to develop a new class of professionals who combine sound technical knowledge in using software tools across multiple platforms with appropriate functional knowledge to deploy IT effectively for business performance improvement and competitive advantage."