(The Economic Times)
Do we have industry oriented engineering graduates?
Engineering, once slated to be a middle class households way to success has fallen out of favour. There is an overflow of engineers with most of them being employable, because of low-quality education and outdated curriculums which do not adapt to automation and latest technology being used in industry.
Plunging admissions, lack of infrastructure and stricter AICTE rules have forced several colleges to shut down. Research and surveys by leading firms, show the employability percentage of engineers in India to be dismally low while also finding that 95% of Indian engineers can’t code
True, while candidates from India’s premiere engineering colleges such as the IITs are still in demand, the thousands of lesser known engineering colleges and technical training institutes whose education quality and employability of graduates is a question mark. Employability levels for domain specific roles are the highest for electronics engineers at 7.07 per cent, followed by mechanical design engineer and civil engineer, and the lowest for chemical design engineer.
To iron out this, the government of India has stepped in to mend things by making it compulsory for engineering students to complete two internships during their course. The colleges will have to arrange for these internships. AICTE will also announce an updated curriculum in a few weeks. With the advent of automation and robots, employment opportunities could be hit. Colleges need to have industry based curriculum.
How will the employability challenge hit us?
The “Make in India projects aspires to increase manufacturing capacity in India and generate 100 million jobs by 2022. This project could be limited by the lack of employable graduates churned out by our engineering colleges.
India’s demographic advantage could help it compete with china for manufacturing jobs in the near future. However lack of skilled labour to cope with the latest technology and the un employability of graduates could turn into a burden, causing a huge unemployment crisis.