Why 80 percent of Engineers are Unemployed ?

Why 80 percent of Engineers are Unemployed ?

ADMIN ENGGSOLUTION | 2020-09-18
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A recent employability report has found that over 80 percent of engineers in India are unemployable as they lack the technological skills required by employers now.

Every year, thousands of engineering graduates pass out of college, but only a tiny handful of them are trained in the skills that employers need now. Over 80 percent of them are unemployable for any job in the knowledge economy, said a report by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds.

Skill gap and requirement gap

Forbes has listed AI, ML and Cloud in the top 10 digital skills to possess as part of the emerging tech portfolio of skills. 25 million to 50 million jobs are going to be created in emerging tech worldwide and India alone will require 6 million to 12 million jobs in this space in the next decade according to a McKinsey study. However, the engineers of today are not being skilled right.

We need to remember that these are students who have already been in a classroom kind of learning environment for their entire life till date. However, the certificates that they currently have from their engineering and other online courses does not guarantee them a job.

A study by the analytics firm Aspiring Minds found that only 4.8% of candidates could write correct logic and less than 1.4% could write correct code.

Adding to this list are the growing numbers of experienced engineers already in the workforce whose skills are quickly becoming obsolete! It is estimated that more than half of the 4 million engineers in tech will need to be re-skilled to relevant to the industry!

1. The report stated that only 3.84 percent of engineers in the country have the technical, cognitive and linguistic skills required for software-related jobs in start-ups.

2. Only 3 percent of engineers have new-age technological skills in the areas which are booming now such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and mobile development.

3. Thus, only 1.7 percent of engineers have the skills needed to work in new age jobs.

4. The report provides the primary reasons for low employability of India’s engineers -- only 40 percent engineering graduates do an internship, while a mere 7 percent students do multiple internships

5. Apart from a lack of internships, engineers also have low employability because only 36 percent do projects beyond their curriculum. Thus, they don’t always build the skills to solve problems in a variety of situations.

6. Another problem adding to low employability of engineers is that the subject is taught in a very theoretical manner in colleges -- 60 percent faculty doesn't talk about application of concepts in the industry and only 47 percent of the engineers attend any industry talk.

T

here is really no macro change in India's higher education policy in the last decade, or even more.

Any policy needs to encourage that the higher education sector works like a market -- universities and institutions are run by professional management, educated individuals and global corporations are incentivised and excited to get into the sector, there is healthy competition which leads to improvement in quality of education.

The government needs to play a role in making this market efficient by creating transparent information about the quality of institutions, so that the parents and students choose colleges based on real factors rather than marble flooring, chandeliers and foreign faces.

Rating of colleges need to be based on outcomes, such as performance of faculty/students in standardised tests, employer rating, than input parameters like number of labs, faculty, area, etc.

Ranking of colleges on these parameters should be widely made available, which helps parents/students make the right choices and creates incentives for colleges to improve on these parameters.

In the last decade, lot of efforts have been made, which have created some centres of excellence.

However, this has really made no sizable difference in aggregate.

The government needs to take higher education as a priority and understand that it has a direct short term and long term impact on economic growth.

Let’ check some of the reasons behind unemployed engineers:

1) Incapable engineers: After getting B.tech degree no engineer is capable to do work without at least 6 months or one year of training. This is a burden for companies so they are putting freshers aside with a simple word “experience”.

2) Demand supply: There are nearly 4000 colleges across India. All producing 15 lakh engineers per year but for every single job 300 members are competing. The ratio increases every year due to the previous year unemployed.

3) Outdated syllabus: The technology is changing drastically but the syllabus of colleges is not changing linearly with present technologies. So how can engineers survive and compete with people with 10 year old syllabus.

4) Fake Faculty & facility: By the recent rides done on the Telangana state in India 900 fake faculties have come out. Of course major faculty is also not efficient. The facilities provided by the colleges are not at all satisfactory.

5) I.T sector development: for the past 10 years I.T sector developed all over the India. So many people got jobs but the IT companies gave jobs to people who did not know software i.e from fields like Electronics, Communication, Mechanical, Electrical etc. When I.T sector fails those people are thrown out.

6) Prestige issue: Some of them feel that the B.tech degree is prestigious than a normal degree and parents are also forcing them to think that way. In some states some people study engineering for extra dowry in marriages.

Present scenario of engineering graduates:

1) Training for jobs: Engineers are moving to the major cities near to them with their degree for training. They are staying and training until they get a job. Big cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and pune are filling with graduated and unemployed engineers. So many training centers are cheating them by taking their unemployment as an advantage.

2) Ready to do any sort of work: You can find engineering graduates working as private teachers, bank employees, lecturers at the same college which he studied in. In an ugliest scenario you can find them as a peon.

3) Going for higher studies: To postpone their unemployment status some are doing M.TECH and M.E.

Precautions to avoid this situation:

1) Decreasing the number of seats: By doing so; limited can study engineering so that it can regain its fame. We should appreciate Telangana state C.M (K.C.R) for taking a step forward by cancellingthe license of more than 100 engineering colleges in his state.

2) Government should provide good faculty and update the syllabus. The examination pattern should be tough.

3) Make in India & startups: Even though government has taken initiative in this some of the faults in these programs are working against beneficiaries.

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