Engineers make a pretty important part of the society as they are the ones on whom the development of the country depends but nowadays, there are so many engineering colleges in India which are producing engineers at the same rate as a product is being manufactured in a factory, which is ultimately reducing the quality of engineers, sad but true.
A recent report claims that almost 95% of Indian engineering graduates are not employable as a programmer. However, the directors of the highly esteemed institutes, IITs, feel that the claim is more hype and less substance; however, it is still a matter of concern.
When Economic Times had a chat with these IIT directors, they said that the reason behind this is the huge number of students passing out from Indian engineering colleges every year, lack of proper infrastructure, good faculties and the outdated curriculum that they are studying in institutes. Director of IIT-Kanpur, Indranil Manna, says,
“The country is producing as many as 10 lakh engineers a year. There needs to be a serious review. Do we really need so many engineers? Are there that many jobs?”
However, he also says that students can’t be blamed for this as majority of them get enrolled in courses because they want to study but many institutes don’t have good teachers and lack good infrastructure as well as laboratory. He further adds that it is the fault of the system which is letting so many low quality institutes run their courses.
Director of IIT Delhi, V Ramgopal Rao, also shares his opinion with Indranil and asserts that there is overproduction of engineers but this doesn’t mean that the majority of them are unsuitable for jobs. He says,
“Our job is to produce graduates who are broadbased and who can be trained for a given job. Not to be so narrowly focused that they can only do one kind of job. We must strengthen our ITI and polytechnic diploma education by incorporating a significant hands-on training component.”
The fundamental reason behind this overproduction of engineers can be the desire of parents to see their child as an engineer. However, those who study from IIT and other premium colleges get high or good pay packages but this doesn’t happen with those who study in non-premium institutes. In fact, sometimes, they are forced to work in non-engineering profile.
Director of IIT-Guwahati, Gautam Biswas, says,
“There is no doubt that this (debate over employability) is not applicable to IITs, NITs, some notable CFTIs such as the IIITs, IIEST, IIST, etc. Some leading state universities including Jadavpur University and Anna University colleges are imparting very high-quality education as are private institutes such as BITS, VIT, Amity and SRM, among others.”
Gautam is worried for the students who study in colleges which are not raising their standards as per the need of the hour. While Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT-Bombay, says that training is a must for the student who is going to work and nobody can be sent directly to work from college. He also talks about the claim which says that 95% engineers are unfit for job,
“If the situation was that dire, so many IT companies wouldn’t be recruiting in such large numbers.”
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