From prehistoric to modern times, engineering is playing an essential role in the development of India.
India leads in providing high-quality engineering education to the whole country. For instance, more than 10,500 institutions are providing technical graduation degree. The total intake of students comprises of more than a competitive number of 3.5 million but placements are very less in compared to enrollment which the states provide i.e 800,000 jobs that mean the guarantee of giving a job to only 1/4th of the students graduating with lots of ambitions and little technical knowledge.
What’s more interesting is that even the recruiters mention that “whatever you have studied till now is not going to help in doing the work you will be doing now for the rest of your life”.
There is a huge difference in the curriculum that is being taught to students and the way it helps them in getting jobs. A devastating report shows that over 75 % of engineering students graduating every year are unemployable in the knowledge economy for any job.
So what can be the foremost reason behind this overgrowing unemployment in the country?
One of the main reasons can be an outdated curriculum. Talking to the students reveal how they have to take up extra courses to secure a job position in the rapidly growing economy. So it is their own applied knowledge and hard work that has nothing to do with the curriculum originally designed for them.
Most of us don’t know that the syllabus of engineering vastly differs across different states of India, which is compiled with poor quality of education standards that led the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) to reduce around 1.6 L engineering seats according to a report by Hindustan Times which revealed that while a total of 15.87 lakh seats, under both undergraduate and post-graduate courses, were available in 2018-19, this number has fallen to around 14.66 lakh in 2019-20.
This sudden reduction of seats is an important step taken to maintain proper quality standards. Teaching a curriculum is not just enough for a student to face the real challenges he will face in his / her life. But the question remains the same – “Have they ever been taught what they have tested”?
The main purpose of students immigrating to the US, UK or other EU countries shows the pure lack of the availability of the technical expertise they are looking for. While Private Institutions stepped in to create a number of engineers, the thing which didn’t get enough attention was the importance of teaching modern techniques of the discipline.
Post the engineering boom that peaked in the early 2000s, many parents push their children into technical courses based solely on job security.
Engineering differs vary widely from other disciplinary courses as it’s ever-changing and highly dynamic due to the technological advancements every day, which is the main reason why technical syllabus structure needs to be updated frequently to accept these changes, which created a rapid decrease in the number of jobs in a country.
This Engineers day, we need to see beyond the lines and universities, to understand how complicated things for students has to be made simpler so that they are mentally ready for the world to face. It’s very important to correct the loopholes for a better nation.
-Aman Goswami
