The Proprietory Vs. Open Source Software in Management Education

IT @ Schools Projects in the state of Kerala:

A successful campaign, which was driven by a large number of FOSS enthusiasts and received much publicity, was that for the inclusion of Free Software in IT education in schools. The Department of Education, Government of Kerala, started a project called IT@School for bringing IT enabled education to the high schools in the state. The project found that most of the teachers and the students possessed little IT skills.ⁱ They, therefore, decided to start IT education at the high school level initially. IT was thus introduced in the eighth standard in the year 2002 after conducting training in IT for a large number of teachers. The project has developed and reached a high degree of success and self-reliance mainly because of the use of FOSS methodologies.

Reinventing the Wheel

The students in schools in Kerala to whom the IT @ school project was introduced in the year 2002, will be doing their university education and some may even opt for Management program which is only a stone throw away from now. The crux is that they are familiar with the open source software through the IT @ School projects and while at their MBA level they will be forced to learn the proprietary software, which amounts to what is called “reinventing the wheel”. This is time consuming and prohibitively costly for the students, as well as the institutions . It is high time that the universities consider about revising their syllabus and try to incorporate free and open-source software tools in the curriculum.

A trend has to be set for the next generation for them to understand the importance of an effective learning environment. Students should be taught that “Learning is Sharing”. As the open source software promotes the culture of developing learning community who cares for the societal development rather than the commercialization and profit making aspects alone is a must for every society, if we consider the products of our education system should be of use to society at large, Imparting education in a tailor made propitiatory software environment, may look the easier option in the short term, but does it provide the kind of development opportunity and cost-effectiveness the open source systems on the other hand would provide ?.

The answer to this questions is that it will be worth-while to note that the state of Kerala has been one of the pioneers of the open-source software in education of children in the schools here, they have already conducted one of the worlds “all open-source” examinations, that necessarily means millions of children are already trained in Open-Source software in this state, through various vehicles of imparting education , mainly the IT@School project. These children will now enter the universities of Kerala, However once they reach management schools, if we check the recommended software for Management Education , We see Software like the office suits made by proprietary vendors are the only choice.

It is not that these software are bad or evil, but why should a student already trained in an open-source spreadsheet on GNU/Linux in the schools have to suddenly change the software environment while in the Masters Degree education, He/She can spend the time required for the transition for other productive purposes, So this article is an effort to find out if Management students can continue to use the GNU/Linux and other available open-source tools and still manage the processes required by the available Syllabus and have the similar results as proprietary tools currently suggested.