Why More Than 90% Of India's Engineers Are Unemployable?
India is one of the largest producers of engineers in the world. Yet, more than 70% of engineers are unemployed due to severe competition, and by some estimates only 7-8% of engineering graduates are actually employable.These are the first two lines of the Wikipedia article; Engineering education in India.
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| Wikipedia Logo |
It also revealed that a whopping 97 percent of the engineering graduates wanted jobs in either software engineering or core engineering. However only 3 percent of them possessed the suitable skills to be employed in software or product market, and only 7 percent could handle core engineering tasks.
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| Aspiring Minds is an Indian evaluation and certification company. |
Reasons For Unemployment
India produces around 1.5 million engineers each year but due to the poor standard of higher education, most of them remain unemployed.
I have been an engineering student myself for the past 2 months and here are some the reasons that I could figure out which are leading to this problem:
1. Extremely poor communication skills.
- A lot of my friends can't converse in basic English without making grammatical errors and are too shy to introduce themselves in front of a class of 70 fellow students. Many of them have never read a book beyond their textbooks. They have no idea about current global events and writing without spelling errors seems quite difficult for them.
- Most of the engineering colleges in our country function like factories. Each year a new batch of students are taught the same repetitive things, a majority of which have no practical use.
- The curriculum is never updated in a period of less 5 years, while the whole world outside has totally changed. Colleges don't prepare students for the real world of the future. Instead, they ensure that the students can't read other books, work on self-improvement and personality development or pursue anything beyond the curriculum by giving them useless assignments, projects, practicals in addition to the long duration of colleges.
- Teachers themselves encourage students to mug up because if you write something in your own words according to your own understanding or don't write as given in the books, you are sure to lose marks. These outdated methods of learning fail to prepare students for the real world they would be facing when they graduate.
- The colleges don't focus on the all-round development of students. The quality of education is quite poor. Colleges only focus on one aspect i.e. getting a degree. Their only purpose seems to be providing degrees to students while filling their pockets with the expensive tuition fees.
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| Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration and Communication are very important skills which are never taught in colleges. |
3. India's obsession with engineering.
- Most of the students are unaware of their reason for pursuing engineering. Majority of them get enrolled in an engineering college because everyone else is doing the same. This 'following the herd' mentality is the reason for the great Indian obsession with engineering.
- Students have no idea about the things they are passionate about and hence they prefer doing what everybody else around them is doing. There is a famous meme about engineering in India which states "In India, you become an engineer first and then figure what to do with your life."
- Parental pressure. Parents comparing their kids with some of the very successful engineers from their families and pressurizing them to be like them is quite common in India.
- IITs: The Indian middle-class dream. 'Very high paying jobs in esteemed companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.' is how most people recognize IITs. This belief tends to drive students to enroll into coaching institutes and participate in the great Indian race for admission into IITs, NITs, and IIITs. Each year 1.2 million applicants compete for 32,289 seats in these reputed institutes which guarantee success with a probability of 2.69% of finishing at the top. Many students who fail to grab a seat get enrolled in various private colleges for contentment.
- Majority students pursue engineering to get a job. None of them really study engineering to gain knowledge or widening their horizon, but to magically land up with a high salary job.
Possible Solutions
Some of the possible solutions to this problem can be:
1. Colleges should focus on the all-round development of students.
- Development of communication skills and fluency in English should be more importance than making them submit countless assignments, projects, and practicals; most of which are useless and don't provide any practical knowledge.
- Personality development and confidence building classes should be conducted regularly throughout the 4 years of engineering.
- The curriculum should be updated at least once in two years and should include all the latest researches and it should make students ready for their future instead teaching them things of the past. The curriculum should prepare students for the kind of jobs they would be doing after graduating.
- The use of technology should be incorporated into learning. This would help students to stay updated with the latest technological inventions and be comfortable using them. This would surely help them develop the skills necessary to get jobs in various technical fields.
- The students should be given the freedom to write answers according to their understanding with a few suggestions from teachers and the rote method of learning should be discouraged.
2. Students need to pursue their passions and interest.
- Most of the students are unaware of the large number of career options available other than engineering and medicine for science stream and C.A. for commerce stream. If schools and junior colleges could conduct career workshops and seminars, the students could get exposed to a number of career options and pursue their interests. Students should devote some time to figure out their passions and interests and do the required research.
- Students need to work on their communication skills, self-improvement, and personality development. They need to read a lot of books, stay updated on current affairs and improve writing skills.
- The 'following the herd' mentality needs to change. In the end, it is your life and your future. Don't make that important decision by blindly following others.
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| Stop doing something just because everyone else is doing it. |
3. Parents need to stop pressurizing and comparing their kids to others. They need to realize that each child is different and thrusting the burden of their dreams and desires on their kids' shoulders will bring no good. Parents should encourage their kids to pursue those things they are interested in rather than forcing them to choose something because someone else was successful and made millions while working in that field.
4. Colleges should encourage entrepreneurship by conducting regular workshops and seminars to expose the students to new business ideas and ways of earning a good living.
5. One last thing; don't pursue anything just for making money. Most students get into engineering for getting a job and earning money. But getting a job is secondary. Study for the sake of gaining knowledge. When you expect a profit from education, you're heading in the wrong direction.
If you've read the About Page of this blog, you might know that I love computers and that is my reason for pursuing engineering. I'm not really studying engineering with the mindset of getting a job but to learn about computers as much as possible (though the majority of the syllabus is trash and obsolete). There is a great quote from the movie '3 Idiots' which states:
"Don't chase success, instead chase excellence and success would come chasing you."
That's all with today's post. For your views and suggestions, don't forget to comment down below and be sure to follow this blog for more interesting posts. Until next time:
Keep reading and keep smiling:)
Keep reading and keep smiling:)
References:
1. Only 7 per cent engineering graduates employable: What's wrong with India's engineers? | India Today
2. The interesting story of our education system | Adhitya Iyer | TEDxCRCE
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