Is your engineering degree enough?

There was a time, a couple of decades ago, when the Indian Engineer could sail through college and land a job without falling prey to cutthroat competition as he is now. But today the times have changed. India’s engineering boom that started in the 90s still goes strong today and has resulted in a great disparity: there are over 19 lakh engineers in the country and not even half the number of jobs. Now that so many become engineers, the indicative function of their technical degree fails, and employers have to distinguish the technically proficient from the rest.

So in this case, is classroom learning enough?

A notable problem that students face is an unrevised curriculum. Focus on theoretical learning over practical application along with years of studying according to the rote learning system makes their shift from “unquestioning learners” to “innovators in the job market” difficult.

With an obsolete curriculum in the age of rapidly evolving industries, students fail to acquire the important skills required for their jobs. The skill gap between students is gigantic. According to a New Delhi-based employment solutions company, Aspiring Minds, only 3% of graduating engineers have the suitable skills to be employed in software or product market, and only 7% can handle core engineering tasks. The “skills” that we talk about here are the technical skills that corporate jobs expect of their employees; those which are not taught the old-fashioned way.

Live-Application based learning is the need of the hour

It’s no shocker that students face numerous difficulties in their transition from college to a corporate workspace, most of which has to do with their insufficient knowledge of technical information. They are given no opportunity to put the theoretical knowledge they acquire into practice, or to innovate on their own. They are keen on learning but unfortunately, there is no scope for them to demonstrate their practical skills.

With education technology experiencing a new global high, we are hopeful that it might just be the apt solution to these problems. Sayantan Chatterjee, Founder of Beatest, recognizes the skill-gap issues between students and the difference between rote learning and application and aims to resolve these problems through a new-age learning system which prepares them for whatever the real world may hit them with.

Beatest acknowledges the fact that doing is the best way of learning and hence offers application-oriented courses to the students through the country’s first live application based learning platform that enhances their level of technical skill through a hands-on learning approach. Every student taking up the courses on the platform is given the opportunity to build something on his/her own from scratch so that they not just learn but work on their skills. As Sayantan says, “Aside from providing them the necessary exposure and opportunity to work on their technical skills, we help them gain the required confidence to go out and get a job based on their skills. We don’t just offer education; we offer them something to be proud of.” 

What we can conclude is that millennials are having it really tough. With too many colleges and too many students and not nearly enough jobs, it has become a sort of frenzy where engineers are desperately trying to make decent careers out of their qualifications. But attempts to solve this problem are being made with more people resorting to education technology. Recently IIT Delhi has started planning to allow its Ph.D. students to convert their thesis into start-ups. This move shall be of utmost help for young innovators trying to start their own venture. With Beatest focusing on application-oriented learning or IIT Delhi opening up new pathways for budding entrepreneurs, it seems that the need of the time has started being acknowledged. 

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