Confronting the Crisis in GIS Education amidst Changing Perception of Geographic Information System to GI Science Dr Seema M Parihar Reader & GIS Trainer Department of Geography, Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, India Email: smparihar@gmail.com The need for many entry level graduates who are familiar with GIS technology is certainly going to rise in coming years as GIS is a specialized service unlike computer science which addresses wide spectrum of services and so would be the need for their teachers or trainers. However, teachers’ or trainers’ conceptualization of GIS is guided today neither by any specific discipline nor by a particular regional location. It is steered by a global force that is caught in a crisis of changing acronymic perception of GIS – some prefer to call it Geographic Information System, while others prefer to call it GI Science. The paper confronts the conceptual nuances that are going to be involved if the ‘global GIS business estimates for services ranging about 5 billion $ (Arvind Thakur, 2005)’ have to be targeted. Educational space is caught in a debate of assigning different place value to GIS including tool, skill, profession, niche or separate discipline with its own science. The paper explores all those different dimensions that a Geography teacher or trainer delves while designing the structure of their respective courseware. It also inquire into different reasons because of which GIS has been slow to diffuse into pre-collegiate classrooms of spatial teaching albeit continuous successes in the spatial industry. Another dimension of inquiry probes the causal dimension for which after 2000 the GIS stakeholders want all of a sudden the science coinage of GIS, that started its journey more than forty years back in 1960 as a system. The paper reveals the outcome of a questionnaire surveyed from different levels of GIS users – academicians, industry and project players. It analyses the necessary challenges that need to be targeted if the crisis arising out of changing nature of GIS have to be absolved for meeting the challenge of man power development where India is predicted as ‘a workforce mine for the world (Rajesh Mathur, 2005)’. The paper concludes suggesting a four- tier arrangement in understanding nature of GIS for spearheading academic space.