Employability Of Engineering Graduates In India: A Challenge Needs To Address

As per the data shared by the HRD ministry, India has total 6,214 Engineering and Technology Institutions in which around 2.9 million students are enrolled. Every year on an average 1.5 million students get their degree in engineering, but due to lack of skill required to perform technical jobs less than 20 percent get employment in their core domain. This is a huge loss in terms of manpower and economy. As the World is moving very fast in the technology field, we need to fix the skill of our engineering graduates quickly to be at per with the World’s best countries.

Government is trying to address this problem by implementing Outcome Based Education (OBE) system in all technical colleges and Universities of India. OBE is a student-centered instruction model that focuses on measuring student performance through outcomes. Once OBE is implemented in full phase, it will automatically take care of the course curriculum, teaching-learning process and evaluation of student knowledge and learning as per the set standard. Students average thinking and knowledge level will differ with the help of innovative and indirect questions ask through assignments, practical exams, mid-term and end terms. It will also help the Technical Institutes and its various departments to set their vision, mission, program and course outcomes. The attainment of these outcomes will be measurable with various rubrics which actually help the institute or the department to identify their shortcoming.

Though OBE addresses so many challenges regarding the improvement of teaching-learning process and quality of graduates produced by Institutes, but implementation of OBE alone cannot change the present scenario. If we consider other professional courses like Medical Sciences, Law, Chartered Accountant; they complete duration of internship or apprenticeship before they are professionally enrolled. We have never tried to implement this kind of rigorous skill-based training to our engineering graduates. The one-month vocational training before the start of the final year is just to fulfill a part of the curriculum without fulfilling the skill development.

So to ensure that the crisis of joblessness is solved steadily we need to take some hard decision. The B.Tech. Project which students do in their last six months (8th semester) needs to be scrapped. Instead, they should work in an industry as an apprentice and their final grading will be given by the industry following some fixed guidelines. To implement this kind of training, both the technical institutes and the industries need to work hand-in-hand. The college has to identify all the industries nearby and the specific training they can provide to the students. Based on that the students can choose their industry and training area. If effectively implemented, it will help all the three stakeholders: the academic institutes, the tie-up industries, and the graduating engineers. Now the institute need not to bother about student’s placement and focus more on education delivery process. On the other hand, the industry will able to use a technically sound student to do their project at a minimal cost. And the students earn a particular skill set along with their degree which will guarantee them a job in their core domain. A proper workout in this direction will definitely help us to solve the mystery of poor employability of Engineering graduates.

Sudipto Sarkar

Guest Author Sudipto Sarkar is the Dean of School of Engineering & Technology at NSHM Knowledge Campus Group of Institutions – Durgapur.