Around 85 Engineering institutes across seven states of India have sought permission from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to shut down from the 2018-2019 academic year. The move has reignited the debate on the quality of engineering education in India.

Striking a Balance between Quality and Quantity

The requests for closure of engineering institutions have been submitted from Maharashtra, Kerala, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Projected figure point towards more than 1.36 lakh seats in B.Tech and M.Tech streams remaining vacant for the 2018-19 academic year. Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana have filed a petition to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), requesting the regulatory body to not approve any new engineering colleges for the academic year 2018-19. Another 639 institutes have requested AICTE to reduce their intake by 62,000 seats collectively and have sought No Objection Certificates  (NOC) from the respective state governments. These moves come in the wake of AICTE imposing penalty on colleges with poor admissions records over the last five years.

Over the past decade, AICTE has been blamed for generously granting approvals for new technical institutes and for a while now, the regulator has been frequently petitioned by several states to halt approvals. However, AICTE has thus far refrained from altering the approval procedure for engineering institutes, as it would reduce the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) of the country. The GER is widely used to show the general level of participation in higher education. India’s GER in higher education had increased from 24.5 percent in the 2015-2016 academic year to 25.2 percent in the 2016-2017 academic year, according to the latest edition of the All India Higher Education Survey (AIHES).

India aims to attain a GER of 30 percent by 2020. However, the falling quality of the education on offer has brought the limelight on the need for the right balance between quantity and quality. In light of the recent events, AICTE seems to have re-aligned its focus on developing the quality of the educational space. “The council has accepted the request by four states – Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana – of the six states and the council will think over the suggestions before issuing any new establishment,” said AICTE Chairman Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, responding to the petitions.

The Downward Spiral of Engineering Education in India

Up until a few years ago, engineering was a revered course with a promising future. The rapid growth of India’s Information Technology (IT) industry in the 1990s and 2000s needed manpower. So, organizations started hiring in bulk from reputed engineering colleges, offering a relatively high salary package and a good lifestyle to freshers. This caught the attention of other aspiring and budding engineers and prompted hundreds of thousands of students, often pushed by their parents, to pursue a profession that often guaranteed status and wealth. This led to thousands of engineering colleges of questionable quality mushrooming across India. In no time everyone in India wanted to be an engineer.

But this trend made engineering education in India lose its credibility. Today, it has become a brand more than a course. According to data available with the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry, India has more than 6,200 engineering institutions which are enrolling 2.9 million students. Around 1.5 million engineering graduates are released into the job market every year. But only a small fraction are employable; the pitiable state of engineering education in India ensures that they simply do not have adequate skills to be employed. Lack of skill education, shortage of faculty members (both in quantity and quality), rampant corruption, profit-hungry managements and focus on rote-learning methods are the major issues plaguing the engineering education space. Though 97 percent of graduating engineers want jobs in either core engineering or software engineering, only 3 percent have suitable skills to be employed in the software or product market, and only about 7 percent can handle core engineering tasks, according to the 2016 edition of the engineer’s employability report by Aspiring Minds.

This reporter interacted with E. Sreedharan, Principal Advisor, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), and a pioneering name in the field of engineering in India. “We are not taking pains to keep ourselves updated with the latest in the industry. Engineering colleges in our country are producing very sub-standard quality of engineers. Is that enough? In the engineering profession, knowledge is the most important thing. You will have to be an expert and your knowledge has to be practical-oriented. What I find is that the best engineers coming out of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) straightaway make a beeline to foreign countries for higher studies or better employment. Many even join the IT sector or opt for a management degree. But our country needs very learned engineers to handle the infrastructure projects on the horizon to lead India’s foray into the future. If these projects are to be handled, the team of engineers in the country will have to have a different orientation and standard, with a different mission,” said Sreedharan.

Why No Takers for Engineering in India

The ability to apply the concepts learnt in order to constantly develop innovative things and find solutions to complex problems are the attributes of an employable engineer. Industry insiders say that in a strained economic condition, companies do not want to spend much on training and would prefer candidates with relevant skill sets. The latest edition of the engineer’s employability report by Aspiring Minds finds that in Tier 1 cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad etc., 18.26 percent of engineers are job-ready, while in Tier 2 cities such as Kochi, Surat, Nagpur etc., 14.17 percent are employable. However, the equally qualified candidates from lower tier cities are far behind due to the insufficient infrastructure for developing skill specific knowledge. The vacancy in engineering and other technical programmes can be owed to a number of other career choices now available to students. Except students pursuing mining, metallurgy, civil and mechanical courses; all others pursuing engineering education in India are facing a gradual meltdown in terms of employment opportunities in their core sectors.

Slowing growth in the European and American markets has hit the hiring sector in India’s IT companies. As automation makes basic and repetitive jobs redundant, IT companies are getting more selective in hiring. In a major blow to students pursuing engineering education in India, IT companies have shunned the practice of bulk hiring from campuses and are opting for candidates with niche, new-age skills and those who can be re-skilled. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation will reduce the number of IT services sector employees in India by about seven to 10 percent by 2022 in India, according to HfS Research, the leading analyst authority and global community for business operations and IT services.

Problems of Engineering Education in India

The Indian engineering education space is plagued by a number of problems that have collectively led to the declining quality of engineering graduates. Chief among those is the outdated syllabi on offer. The course contents do not focus on areas which will actually help the industry after employment. There is a big gap between the present day market needs and what engineering education in India equips its future employees with. Despite explosive growth in science and technology over the last decade, the syllabi have hardly ever been updated.

“Mobile computing is proving to be the next growth driver in the market. But the curriculum does not reflect it. The traditional engineering education in India has barely evolved and is miles behind the pace at which the industry is growing” said Siddarth Bharwani, the Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Jetking Infotrain Ltd., a leading IT and IMS training company.

Shortage of quality faculty members is another problem faced by the engineering education sector. Most educated engineers join teaching as a profession as a means to earn a livelihood and not driven by passion. In the pecking order, multinational companies come first, followed by the IT big shots of India, and then come the smaller engineering companies. Most of the remaining engineering graduates go on to join as faculty members at engineering institutes. Thus, unlike other parts of the world, the Indian faculty members are not the very best from the industry. The lack of focus on innovation and research stems from this trend.

Lack of emphasis on skill-based engineering education in India is another flaw in the system. Almost all of the engineering students in the country study their textbooks, write their examinations and collect their degrees without ever working on practical applications outside the course-mandated laboratory and project work. They realize their shortfall only when confronted by real world applications and are forced to take extra time in order to equip themselves or suffer unemployment. “One big issue with a fresh graduates is his or her incomplete understanding of basic concepts. The lack of in-depth understanding of technical information and insufficient knowledge across domains are the major skill gaps in the area,” added Siddarth.

Soft skills and language skills have become very important in the present job industry, but they are the most ignored aspects of engineering education in India. “The inability of a candidate to deliver his or her views effectively during the interview leads to rejection of even the most brilliant candidate. The issue is that there is no effort to ensure that the students develop their skills in a wholesome manner,” opined Siddarth.

The Future of Engineering Education in India

Dr. Gautam Biswas, the Director of IIT Guwahati, insists that the debate over the employability quotient of engineering graduates does not apply to the IITs, the NITs, and the Centrally Funded Technical Institutes (CFTIs). “Some leading state universities are imparting very high-quality education as are private institutes. The problem is that several colleges and universities simply haven’t been able to raise their standards. Students, thus, don’t have access to the right curricula, essential laboratory infrastructure, or good teachers,” he said.

Nevertheless, the clamour for engineering programmes has not abated, even as the IT boom is on the decline. Over the past few months, IT giants such as Wipro, TCS, Infosys and Cognizant have all announced plans to fire hundreds of employees. With the industry evolving and automation increasing, thousands of jobs are at risk. Engineering education better suited to the changing times with a more practical and relevant approach to learning seems to be the only way out. The question remains whether there will be a turnaround in the fortunes of engineering education in India in the near future.

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Reporting by Aravind R Menon
Special Correspondent, Kochi

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