Worthless Degrees and Unemployment: The Prevalent Situation of Aspiring Engineers in India

Qualified but unemployed – Most of the aspiring engineers in India can relate to this phrase as this is their prevailing situation in the country! For the students in India, Engineering – either B.E. or B.Tech Engineering – is among the most sought-after graduation path for a bright career in future – the lucrative salary package is what lures them into taking this decision.

In reality, a majority of the engineering graduates have no other option than remaining unemployed or taking up jobs that come their way in non-engineering fields. Such people, who fail to get the right jobs, keep changing their field often and even enrol in extra courses to qualify themselves to meet the market demand. So, what they have in hand when they complete their Engineering is – a worthless degree and unemployment status.

Unemployable Engineers

If you happen to look at the mushrooming engineering colleges across the country and the vast number of students graduating out of these colleges, it’s quite natural to impose the question – Does our country require such a lot of engineers? Are all of them employable?

Before understanding whether or not India needs such a lot of engineers, are all the engineers, who graduate each year, skilled to be employed? The answer to this question is a simple ‘No’. The country is faced with a massive problem related to an enormous gap in skills. While thousands of engineers graduate every year, only a few possess the skills needed in the industry.

It’s only in the final year of the 4-year course that the students realise that they are unemployable as they lack the required skills for getting the right job. By the time they brush up their skills, unemployment steps in.

Reasons for the Unemployable Status of Engineering Graduates

As per 2016 statistics of a renowned job skills credentialing firm, almost 80% of engineering graduates are not employable in India. This colossal figure is because of two reasons:

● It’s easy for new engineering colleges to get approval from the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), which has resulted in a burgeoning number of institutes that don’t even have the right curriculum or faculty to provide training to the students.
● Secondly, the courses – both B.E. and B.Tech syllabus – are not designed or taught to suit the requirements of the industry in product manufacturing as well as services sector.

Outdated coursework is the primary concern. Furthermore, the coursework is not focused on jobs. Besides improving the standards of education, it’s essential to evolve the undergraduate programs into more job-oriented courses.

The Only Effective Solution

The professional engineering courses have a built-in deep experiential learning element without which the course is incomplete. This inherently-expected learning is built into the coursework to ensure quality and appropriate application of skills.

The only possible and practical solution is to rope in:

● Deep Experiential Learning on live simulated or live environments with actual deliverables that matter
● Do-it-Yourself or hands-on approach
● Industry professionals as mentors

This solution is straightforward when appropriately applied to re-skill experienced engineers. These elements can allow engineers to have long-standing, stable careers in their respective domains.