Engineering - the degree to unemployment?

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High School Students dreamt of great career post completion of Engineering. But what if there dream get shattered because of unemplyment

Do you belong to the fancy community of undergrad degree “ENGINEER”? Have you invested a quarter of family income for four long years in lieu of acquiring just a glossy certificate? Have you been attending classes just to get class-attendance and getting stoned on weekends? If the answer for all this is YES, then you MUST need to put your attention to this article for next 10 minutes.

I feel ashamed to share the stats that belong to this hyped degree but you need to read it since you belong to the great nation called “INDIA”. Every year more than 15 lakhs engineers are produced within the nation but only 1 lakh get the job in their desired field. Ya! You were right i.e. less than 7% (Source: India Today). So what happens to remaining people? – either they go for MBA (investing again) or join family business or get employed to any company offering Rs 3 lakhs package or get into illegal work. This is the career path for most of the undergraduate students in India.

So what happens when such a great chunk of people don’t get employment? Just open a newspaper and you will get the answer – Student Protest, Political Instability, Terrorism, Social Uproar, Employee Sacking etc. All these issues have become part of Indian Culture and we have become immune to it. Ability to apply technical concepts, Innovative mindset, State of the economy, Adaptability and Communications are the factors that influence the employability index of students and as per reports and we are abysmal in this.

Though IIT’s are showing sign of hope but coming tier II or tier III colleges it’s better to dilute the hope. 69% of the top 100 colleges in India are able to write a compilable code where the figure goes down to 31% coming to rest of the colleges. (Source: Hindu Business Line) That’s is the state of education in India.

Let me figure out the reasons for the pathetic education system in India:

Lack of Innovation and Research – Though India produce more engineer than the total population of Switzerland, which rank 1st in Global Innovation Index(GII), its rank 60th in GII. Indian Education system is still glued to old age rote-learning concept where there no place to develop a mindset for providing real-time solutions. 

Reading from books and writing the same definition in answer sheet still help you to qualify the exams with flying colors. All fields have changed in a century but still, the education system still remains the same as it was before. Developing Mindset for Innovation needs the student to question a lot. They should be motivated from childhood to have the inquisitive mindset.

Outdated Curriculum – Though science and technology have shown exponential growth in the last decade but the same trend is reflected in education. The syllabus is not formulated as per the need of the hour. This result in the creation of the gap between industry skills requirement and engineer skills. We can see that mobile technology is incorporated in every sector of the economy but hardly any course deals with it.

The dearth of Quality Faculties – India having a home to more than 30k colleges have a tough time securing high caliber teacher. One multinational company, IT firms, Engineering companies have their pick, the lower grade choose to train students at the institution. They choose this profession, not from passion but to earn their livelihood. Their intellectual level is really low in comparison to honchos sitting working for companies.

Minimum Industry Exposure and Projects – To work for companies students need to have hands-on experience regarding the way it operates. They need to experience the front end part of handling clients, meeting the service standards, recent market trends etc. All these can only be understood if they are given the opportunity to do a more paid internship and live projects. “Start-up India” and “ Skill India’ are commendable steps taken by the government to generate employment.

Deficiency in Soft Skills Training – This issue has grabbed the engineers like pink colour in Jaipur. Despite having the required knowledge and information, students are not able to sell themselves in the interview. This is because of the lack of communication skills, presentation skills, and personality development. A brilliant student despite working hard the round the year struggle to get a job and fall into depression. Colleges need to address the problem so that students can have client handling and team communication skills.