History of Starting MCA program in India and MCA courses in West Bengal

In 1979 the Electronic Commission of the Government of India felt that several computer based projects were not progressing fast enough due to the paucity of trained human resource. The then Chairman of the Electronics Commission Prof. Biswajit Nag set up a panel to project the demand for manpower and suggest appropriate educational programs to meet the requirements of Human Resource.  A minicomputer policy which was in limbo for a long time was just about to be announced based on the Sondhi committee recommendations which was expected to allow many private companies to enter computer manufacture. There was no formal educational program to create a cadre of systems analysts and application programmers. Systems analysts are expected to have breadth of knowledge and maturity as their main job requirement is to interview personnel of various types of organizations and arrive at Systems Requirement Specification (SRS) before embarking on systems design and programming. The committee felt that a basic B.Sc/B.Com degree would give the students some breadth of knowledge and maturity. This led to the idea of 3 year post graduate program which the panel decided to name Master of Computer Applications (MCA). This course was of special relevance to conditions in India and did not mimic any course in the west. It was the panel’s conviction that the MCA course must have three components: strong mathematics base, broad general knowledge on the management structure of organizations including finance, and a strong grounding in computers as a tool in solving problems. The panel felt that the course must include programming, systems analysis and design, operating systems, and basic ideas on architecture of computers. The panel also felt strongly that at least six months of the course must be spent by the students in an organization understudying an experienced systems analyst. [1]

Currently Jadavpur University, Calcutta University, North Bengal University, Burdwan University, Kalyani University, Kalyani Government Engineering College, Vidyasagar University, NIT Durgapur are the government institutes offering MCA in West Bengal. Other than these, there are at least 30 private institutes in West Bengal offering MCA degree under Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technolgy (Formerly, West Bengal University of Technology) [2]. Few Institutes such as IIEST Shibpur and NIT Rourkela have discontinued offering MCA program to focus more on research.

All the Universities or Institutes take students for admission in MCA through JECA. However many private engineering colleges give advertisements in newspapers and in their websites for direct admissions to MCA to fill up the vacant seats after counselling by WBJEE board. Also AICTE has allowed for lateral entry (admission in second year) in MCA course for students with B.Sc computer science or BCA background. Hopefully, this would be implemented from 2017-18.

To take admission in NITs (like NIT Durgapur, NIT Jamshedpur, NIT Trichy, NIT Raipur etc) one needs to appear in NIMCET.

References:

1.     1.   Reminiscences of Prof. V. Rajaraman on How the MCA Programme Started, CSI Communications, September 2014. http://www.csi-india.org/communications/CSIC%20September%202014.pdf

2.   2. List of AICTE approved Institutes for MCA in West Bengal in 2012-13. http://www.aicte-india.org/downloads/MCA/West%20Bengal_MCA.pdf