Why majority of Indian Engineering students remain unemployed?

As per AICT latest report, more than 60% of engineering graduating every years remain unemployed. As per AICT website, there are currently more than 1.55 million under-graduate engineering seats are available in India for the academic year of 2016-17. Less than 1% of engineering students participate in Summer Internship and just around 15% of the programmes are accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA).

Let us take a look at another data. In 2016 alone, more than 1.18 Lakhs engineering seats remained vacant in Tamil Nadu alone. Over 15000 seats remained vacant in Karnataka last year. Hundreds of engineering colleges have been shut down due to lack of students across the country in last few years. As per Aspiring Minds National Employability Report, which is based on a study of more than 1,50,000 engineering students who graduated in 2015 from over 650 colleges, 80% of the them are unemployable. Even many industry leaders have raised the concern over lack of workable knowledge of fresh graduates in India. What is the problem with Indian Education system (mainly in engineering sector)? Till a few years back, the goal of millions of students were to get an admission into an engineering college. Even a degree from normal colleges were considered very prestigious. IITs and NIITs and good state college have still maintained their ultra-high standard. So where is the problem?

Indian IT sector boomed in late 90s and it continued to absorb thousands of fresh Engineering graduates (irrespective of stream) each year till 2014-15. Manufacturing sector also boomed due to liberalization & good GDP growth after 90s. So there was huge demand of fresh engineers. So, there was huge rush in private sector to open new Engineering colleges. Now you will find hundreds of colleges in less developed states (on basis of HDI) like Orrisa & UP (where there was very few colleges 20 years ago). Except, Bihar every big Indian state has enough number of engineering college. Engineering colleges of south boomed due to constant inflow of North Indian students apart from their internal demand. Just look at the IIT coaching centers in Kota, Delhi, Varanasi, Patna etc. Millions of students slog for a few thousand prestigious seats in IITs and NITs. Parents force their children to become engineers. They think that their child’s future is bleak if he doesn’t become engineer. The craze of Indian parents towards Engineering has been beautifully shown in “3 Idiots” movie.

Another point is the quality of education. I graduated from an average college (“D Y Patil College of Engineering, Pune”, affiliated to Pune University) in 2008. One of my lecturers told me that he became a lecturer because he was not able to find a job in corporate sector. Yes, there was a few good teaches but also there were many less than ideal teachers. The main aim of students is to get marks not knowledge. I was not able to do different types of welding properly after passing out as mechanical engineer. And the ultimate goal of doing engineering is to get placement. The “Package” is the measure of success in India irrespective of the knowledge. We generally find headlines in paper that students from some prestigious college get 1 cr package. Many good Engineering institutions in western countries don’t place their students but they help students finding jobs on their own. In IITs and NITs, getting placed on Day 0 is the measure of your intelligence.

As Indian IT industry is getting stagnant and there is not enough growth in manufacturing service, engineering (from average colleges) career is loosing sheen. Lakhs of students remain unplaced and they slog years to find a 10000 per month job in big cities like Bangalore, Delhi etc. A student in a good Bangalore college spends around 7-8 lakhs in just tuition fees and gets placed in a big IT company with a package of 3.5 to 4 lakhs. It is high time for our Government to look into technical education & revamp engineering education in India. A common engineering exam is a welcome step in this direction. I hope that Central Government will reform the engineering education system.