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NIIT, US co to offer 4-year degree course

NIIT Ltd, Asia's largest computer skills trainer, announced on Friday it had tied up with US-based ITT Educational Services Inc to offer a four-year bachelor's degree course to Indian students.

New Delhi-based NIIT, dubbed the McDonald's of computer education because of its vast reach, already offers courses ranging from a 10-hour tutorial costing Rs 500 to four-year courses for Rs 135,000.

"It enriches our portfolio of offerings," NIIT's founder and chairman, Rajendra Pawar, told a news conference. "The economic benefit to the student is much higher in India."

Indiana-based ITT's Information Systems Security, a course recognised by the US Department of Education, costs around $13,000 a year in the United States, but will cost only about $1,233 for NIIT's Indian students who have completed its two-year basic software training course.

The course will teach students how to ensure the security of sophisticated computer systems such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning systems running on the Internet.

It will be taught partly in the classroom and partly online.

Twenty-year-old NIIT, which has trained more than two million students, also has the exclusive rights to market the course in neighbouring Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which will help the 33-year-old ITT expand outside the United States.

NIIT's chief operating officer P Rajendran said the firm, which expects to start teaching the course in September, hopes to recruit 2,500 students for the first batch as global demand for security specialists had soared following the September 11 attacks in the United States.

"The course is an emerging need worldwide. It's like creating a policing network in cyberspace," Rajendran said.

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