Engineering education in India is reaching abyss. Two engineering colleges, Yellamma Dasappa Institute of Technology and Sri Vidya Vinayaka Institute of Technology, were forced to shut due to insufficient funds. Over 200 students were re-allotted seats in other institutes affiliated with Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU).
A notification by the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) stated that students who were eligible as well as those who had not cleared their exams for higher semesters have been allotted seats. Even if students have backlog papers, they can attend classes in the allotted colleges.
The process was carried out by a committee which was formed by the university. The students will have to pay the same fees that they had agreed to at the time of being granted admission.
VTU Vice Chancellor Dr. Karisiddappa said that, henceforth, no admission will be made to the two colleges for the 2019-20 academic year either through the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) or Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMEDK).
M.K. Panduranga Setty, president of the Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges’ Association, said that many other engineering colleges are suffering and finding it difficult to sustain themselves. “Many colleges have less than 30% intake and are unable to pay salaries to their staff,” he said. Several managements are looking for potential clients to sell their colleges as they are no longer profitable.
H.U. Talwar, Director, Department of Technical Education, said that Karnataka has 207 engineering colleges. The All Indian Council for Technical Education had sent closure notices to 800 engineering colleges across India where admissions were poor for five consecutive years, and had asked them to consider closing down the institutions.
A teenager from Kolkata, Shouvik Dutta, ordered food from Zomato. He looked for the details of the delivery-boy and thunder clapped on him. The delivery boy was a post graduate in Commerce. He put up a moving post about a delivery guy. You can read the post from the link below. The issue here is the underemployment and unemployment in India.
Underemployment
Highly-educated Indians looking for lower-skilled jobs is not new. Recently, people with professional qualifications such as M.Tech, B.Tech, and MBA, postgraduates as well as the graduates have applied for posts of sweepers and sanitary workers in the Tamil Nadu Assembly Secretariat. M.Tech students appearing for Junior Engineer posts, graduates working in call-centers, engineers going for Group C & D government jobs, etc. are not rare sights in India. Underemployment is omnipresent in India.
Underemployment arises because of many factors. Partially, the student is also responsible for it. It arises due to the penchant for government jobs, the slump in core jobs, over-flooding with graduates, not enough opportunities in private sectors, etc.
The love for the government job leads to graduates dropping years for preparation. Sometimes, they don’t even consider joining private sector jobs and keep on wasting their time and resources. Automation has decreased core engineering jobs. The market is over-flooded with graduates. This is due to the opening of large numbers of sub-standard universities and colleges. Private sectors, sometimes, act as an infinite loop. They won’t give the job to inexperienced person and vice versa.
Sometimes, the underemployment of highly educated youths leads to the unemployment of lowly and adequately educated people. For eg., M.Tech. students applying and preparing for sub-standard posts like loco-pilot in Railways leads to the reduction in the chances of Diploma holders. Same goes for clerical jobs in banks and in government institutes. In our Prime Minister’s way, selling Pakoda is also a job but a post-graduate pakoda-seller is underemployed. And he might chew away the jobs for the lower educated strata of the society.
What could be done?
Unemployment could be treated by generating jobs and underemployment by creating enough jobs for a suitably qualified person. They should bring a capping system for different government job grades. For eg., for a given group, a person 2 degrees higher than the eligible candidate should not be allowed. A 12th pass job should not allow a post-graduate to apply. The second step could be to generate enough employment to assimilate the graduates and post-graduates. This would definitely solve the problem of underemployment and unemployment both.
Countering the problem of unemployable engineers, AICTE proposed GATE as the ‘Exit exam’ for students graduating in 2019-2020. Though it is just a proposal and yet to be approved, but it has already received so much criticism. Let’s see what it is all about.
Concept of Exit Exam
Students pursuing technical courses across the country for the academic year 2019-2020 might soon have to write a mandatory ‘Exit Exam’ and pass it to get their degree certificate. This decision was taken at a recent AICTE meeting in New Delhi. Considering the increase in the number of unemployed graduates even after graduation, the AICTE has taken this decision. Interestingly, for candidates who have completed their engineering course, the degree certificate will be awarded only after they clear GATE, said AICTE officials. The rest have to re-appear for GATE.
Degrading Engineering Education Quality
According to the article written by Dr. Anil K. Rajvanshi in Navhind-times, the total employable engineers in the country are only 7-8%. National Employability Report 2016 by Aspiring Minds state the pathetic condition of engineers in India. The survey was conducted in 650+ colleges and 150,000 students took part in the survey throughout the country. The key findings were that the employability had remained stagnant for last 4 years. Only 3.84% were found to be employable for startup software engineering jobs. For chemical design engineering jobs, only 1.64% were found to be employable. National Programming Skills Report by Aspiring Minds concludes that only 36% engineers were able to write compilable codes. As low as 2.21% engineers possess the skill to write a fully functional code with best efficiency and writing practices. (Read more: Click here)
Criticism
The move received a lot of criticism from both college and students fraternities. Some teachers believe that it is of no use and the employability depends on individual skills. Students iterates the similar concern. They add the concern of students are already placed in the companies which visit the college before graduation.
Some people term it as a necessary reform to filter out better students and thus, differentiating between ‘engineers’ and ‘degree-holders’. Some people also have an opinion that it is the pedagogy that is to be checked. The curriculum is quite old and students aim to find placement in any profile.
Conclusion
Blame anyone but the end product shall remain the same without reforms. We all know that most of the engineers lack engineering skills and knowledge, which can fetch them placements in core-companies. At least by this reforms, the trend of becoming engineers will shift and the existing students will study. This would also ‘force’ institutes to improve their teaching standards. So, the move can actually reform the engineering education level. Let’s see if it gets the approval.
What’s the age of the kid when he’s learning about vectors and differentiation? Hardly 13 or 14. So these early teens are learning something of intermediate standard in highschool, in the name of base and early preparations. The child to be honest, is more or less socially and publicly constricted so much that expanse of vision (which soars high at this age) is highly limited. In most cases, this child is even not enrolled in a proper school in intermediate. He is enrolled in those so called “dummy” schools, in which he or she only goes to give exams. The child studies in the coaching. As you must have guessed, Kota is the brand ambassador of such systems. So, a teen hardly of around 15-16, leaves the comfort of his home and goes to Kota in pursuit of a seat in reputed engineering or medical colleges. I need not go into details about what he’s missing out by not going to school. The immense competition which they face in those branded coaching institutions is said to be a pre requisite for a good JEE or NEET rank. Hence, they are trained to perform. Let me just describe how this competition is carried out. These students are crammed in their PGs, with more or less no friends, and lot of pressure. They are taught to just study and not anything else, but only the noble sciences, which will help you get a good job. Again, I need not mention that how these things constrict and reconcile the mental horizon of students. Rather than understanding the significance of knowing what they are studying, they study just for the sake of jobs.
Screenshot of a News Published
It is sad, that we can’t only blame the coaching institutions like Allen, FIITJEE, etc for proliferating this mind set among students. The blame majorly has to reside with the education system of our country which allows such practices to flourish. The market of coaching institutes in a never ending one. I just don’ want to go into it. A lot has been talked about it. I just want to divert your attention to the plights of students. The number of suicides is all the way on a increase in Kota. If a survey
is carried out about the mental health of students enrolled at insititutes in Kota, I’m sure a huge number will be suffering from various disorders like anxiety, or hypertension etc. It’s sad that lakhs and lakhs of our revered human resourse in on the path to peril because of such a system.
Samarth Gupta is currently a first year BA hons student in Sonipat. He talks about his experience at Kota in a really sorry note. He says “ I never really wanted to go, but I was forced by my family to pursue engineering. And no place was better than the mecca of IIT preparation,’Kota’. I was sent. I lived in a hostel of atleast 120 students, all belonging to various parts of India. I liked the sciences in general, but I never wanted to be an engineer. I somehow spent my days in kota. All the time there passed as if I was in a trance. I felt nothing close to my heart, I just kept studying. It was a depressing place. No friends, no real motivation. I felt I was robbed of many aspects of my personality there. But, I got into NITs after the result and finally I settled for CS for a University in Patiala. But after an year, I had a final talk with my father. This life was sucking the passion out of my life.
I always wanted to study History and Political science, Land so after many rounds of pursuation, I’m now at other University, doing what I like.” This is only one story out of many. Not many have an escape or the strength to fight for their passion. The above example ended on a happy note, but not all do in that manner. Recently, an article got published in the Times of India about how the Kota model is helping students rediscover themselves and reach new heights. But, they forgot to mention that it is only 5-6% of the people who go there. The rest are suffering in vicious cycles of Peer Pressure, addiction and depression. The numbers of such cases are such huge, that we can’t give a rosy picture at all. The regular news of suicides in only a confirmation. I know that the problem is not something with an immediate solution. But we can at least begin by listening to our own family members. Asking them what they really want to do, what is their passion; and let them follow their cherished dreams. If not, we are again indulging in the business of crushing the buds before flowering.
