I am amazed at how smart and focused young people are nowadays. When I look back at my younger days, my undergraduate years, and compare it with the kids now, I feel a shame, a sense of inadequacy, an inferiority complex towards what we were and what today’s kids are. They are smart, ambitious, better informed and dare to dream big that only the young can. That is not to say that the youth of my generation were not smart, ambitious, and focused. Only I was not among them.
And I feel a sense of let down not by them, but by us towards them. We have not been able to create a world, a society that we feel proud of handing over to them. Despite the shortcomings of what is being handed down by us to our next generation, they are still striving and rearing to go to places where we had never dreamt of in our fantasy.
With all the positive energy and dreams, the youth of today are facing a hard world, which was not theirs in the making. They are stepping out to a world where opportunities are few, yet ambitions are high, where expectations are gigantic yet the means of fulfilling those expectations are few and far in between.
To give a perspective to the problem, here are a few data.
Every year, our education system produces 1.5 million engineering graduates, from 6214 Engineering and Technology institutions[1]. But engineering jobs produced by industry are not remotely adequate. For an economy of $16 trillion, the US produces only 1 lakh engineers against 15 lakh engineers India produces for a $2 trillion economy[2]. So current economic conditions in our country do not and cannot produce enough jobs for more than 15% of engineering graduates and not more than 20% of these graduates will get employed in their core domain. So most engineering graduates, with dreams in their eyes, will get a big jolt, when they start looking for a job.
There is a peculiar dichotomy in engineering education in India. Indian economy is not big enough to absorb all the new engineering graduates and at the same time quality of engineering, graduates are suspect. Inadequate jobs, compound the problem to those who are lucky enough to get a job. It is a simple demand and supply rule. As the supply of engineering graduates is more than the jobs being created by our industries, graduates who are lucky enough to get a job, get a salary that is by no means economically viable to make them financially independent. Of course, I am not including engineering graduates of India’s premier institutes. They are anyway, only less than 10% of total fresh engineering employable graduates[3]. And most of them go abroad for higher studies and get employed there.
The common ploy is taken by the educationists and industry experts that engineering graduates need employability skills before they could be employed in the industry is just a way of passing the buck or brushing the dirt below the carpet. A Wall Street Journal study[4] reveals the grim picture. Less than 20% of engineering graduates are employable in software jobs. When it comes to core areas like mechanical or civil, the numbers are further discouraging, less than 10%.[5] If the graduates are not employable, what is stopping the authorities to change the curricula in tandem with the industry? In the present scenario, even if the curricula are changed, from where would the jobs be created? This engineering education system is nothing but a way of milking money out of gullible parents.
The situation of medical studies is equally alarming. A study of 2018 done in the state of Kerala states that at any given time more than 10,000 MBBS doctors registered in the state are jobless[6]. Leading hospitals in Kochi get more than 200 inquiries every day from MBBS graduates, who have completed their MBBS course from abroad, seeking job openings. They are willing to work with as little as Rs.15,000/- a month. Yet another dichotomy. As per UN/WHO norms, the ideal qualified doctors and population ratio is 1:1000 and India is approximately half of that coveted figure, though we produce 50,000 doctors every year[7]. In India where demand for medical infrastructure far outstrips the supply, it is just opposite to the engineering stream. This disparity between demand and supply has created commercialization of medical studies that are unhealthy and made medical studies such an expensive affair that brilliant students from underprivileged backgrounds cannot even dream of perusing the course. Seats of most private medical colleges are sold to the highest bidder.
If we focus on other education disciplines, the picture is darker. Normal graduates have much less chance of getting respectable jobs once they enter the market to seek jobs. The competition is so severe and jobs are so less that recruiting authorities have a terrible time during recruiting time. Instead of selecting the right candidate, the whole effort is diverted to eliminating the maximum, who all are of the same standard! To overcome this insurmountable problem most recruiters have restored to a subtle act of increasing the minimum required qualifications for positions where those additional qualifications are redundant. So fewer candidates can apply per open position. For example, a lot of engineers are recruited in private Banks for purely non-engineering functions. The same is true for a few blue-chip companies in the FMCG sector, who used to recruit ordinary graduates with good academic backgrounds previously. Now they are more prone to recruiting engineering graduates.
So, where does this entire grim situation leave a young fresh graduate who just stepped out of the University threshold?
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[1] As a per June 2019 study reported in Business World: http://bweducation.businessworld.in/article/Employability-Of-Engineering-Graduates-In-India-A-Challenge-Needs-To-Address/01-06-2019-171291/
[2] As per a July 2018 study published in Deccan Chronicle: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/030718/india-produces-15-lakh-engineers-every-year.html
[3] As per a blog post written by Sajith Pai in 2015: https://medium.com/@sajithpai/how-many-engineers-does-india-produce-b00777fdbc04
[4] WSJ study was done by Geeta Anand in 2011: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703515504576142092863219826
[5] As per the blog post written by Sajith Pai in 2015 mentioned earlier.
[6] As per a report published in Matrubhumi in July 2018: https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/kerala/around-10-000-doctors-remain-jobless-in-kerala-indian-medical-association-1.2984497
[7] A study was done by The Wire published in August 2018: https://thewire.in/education/medical-colleges-mci-mbbs