Skip to main content

Skill India? 80% of engineers "not employable", no change in last nine years: Report

Counterview Desk
“The National Employability Report: Engineers”, prepared by a high-profile consultation firm, Aspiring Minds, with offices in India, US, China, The Philippines Dubai, has expressed concern that low employability of engineering students of India “is a stubborn issue that has shown little or no macro improvement over the last seven years.”
Claiming to be India’s “most authoritative audit of engineering education, providing a comprehensive data-based understanding of the higher education and employment ecosystem”, the report seeks to provide “a glimpse into how the skills of Indian engineers compare with the skills of engineers in the US and China”, even as pointing out that “the world is rapidly becoming a level market for talent.”
Thus, according to the report, which further claims that its findings are based on a sample of more than 170,000 engineering students from 750+ engineering colleges of India, “Indian IT companies have increased their recruitment and hiring in the US, while Chinese and Filipino companies such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have begun to challenge India’s dominance in the call center industry.”

Excerpts:

The past nine years have brought no change in the employability of Indian engineering graduates. India’s higher education system is in need of systemic change. The broad employability numbers remain surprisingly and painfully stubborn!
Macro employability and employability trends show no change over the past nine years. Even today, 80% of engineers are not employable for any job in the knowledge economy. This is quite disheartening. It is safe to conclude that the Indian higher education system has not been helped by the small ad-hoc changes to which it is accustomed, and is rather in need of fundamental change. 
Engineers score very low in next-generation technological skills (i.e., data engineering, data science, AI and wireless). Only 2.5% of Indian engineers5 possess the skills in artificial intelligence (i.e., machine learning and data science) that industry requires. Only 1.5% - 4.5% of engineers possess the necessary skills in data engineering, while only 2.8% - 5.3% are qualified in wireless technologies.
These figures pale compared to the percentage of engineers (5.5%) that are qualified for basic programming. However, the true employability figures for data science are actually much lower: only 50% - 60% of these numbers (or 1.5% total) when we factor in other skills such as cognitive and language that are key for career success.
US job applicants are further ahead in coding skills than Indians; India and China compete! Good coding skills (the ability to write functionally correct code) are possessed by 4.6% of Indian job applicants, 2.1% of Chinese candidates and 18.8% of the US candidates in the IT and software industries. However, if we consider only those candidates who can write correct code with few errors, the gap between China and India narrows (8.6% vs. 9.8%, respectively).
Interestingly, while the percentage of Indian engineers who code well is greater than the number of Chinese engineers, a much higher proportion of Indian engineers (37.7%) cannot write a compilable code compared to Chinese engineers (10.35%). By comparison, the US engineers perform four times better than Indian engineers in coding: only 4% of the US candidates cannot write compilable code despite the fact that the base of the engineering population in the US is approximately four times smaller than in India.
Engineering education is mainly theory-based. Only 40% of students perform internships while only 36% undertake projects beyond their required coursework. Engineering is an applied discipline. Engineers learn primarily by doing, not only by reading and listening.
However, only 40% of engineering students in India perform internships and only 36% undertake projects outside their assigned coursework. As a consequence, the engineering discipline in India is very theoretical. Internships are win-win for industry and academia.
Students are trapped in a college bubble. They have little industry exposure. Only 47% of students attend industry talks. Sixty percent of faculty do not discuss how engineering concepts apply to industry. Engineering students get very little industry exposure either in class or outside. Sixty percent of faculty do not discuss how engineering concepts apply to industry.
Indian engineering students' employability
Only 47% of students report the opportunity to attend a talk by industry personnel during their college career. Most talks that students attend are intra-departmental, rather than seminars, workshops, conferences or webinars that typically feature outside experts and scholars who present complementary or alternative perspectives.
Lack of counseling and direction is the key hurdle for students in finding jobs. Approximately 40% of students report that their primary challenge is finding the right company or the most suitable job profile to which to apply. Their second challenge is that of passing an interview, followed by the challenge of securing an interview.
---
Read full report HERE

Comments

TRENDING

'Draconian' Kerala health law follows WHO diktat: Govt readies to take harsh measures

By Dr Maya Valecha*  The Governor of Kerala has signed the Kerala Public Health Bill, which essentially reverses the people’s campaign in healthcare services in Kerala for decentralisation. The campaign had led to relinquishing of state powers in 1996, resulting in improvement of health parameters in Kerala. Instead, now, enforcement of law through the exercise of power, fines, etc., and the implementation of protocol during the pandemic, are considered of prime importance.

Reject WHO's 'draconian' amendments on pandemic: Citizens to Union Health Minister

By Our Representative  Several concerned Indian citizens have written to the Union Health Minister to reject amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) of the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA75) in May 2022, apprehending this will make the signatories surrender their autonomy to the “unelected, unaccountable and the whimsical WHO in case of any future ‘pandemics’.”

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah*   The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual. 

Bihar rural women entrepreneurs witness 50% surge in awareness about renewal energy

By Mignonne Dsouza*  An endline survey conducted under the Bolega Bihar initiative revealed a significant increase in awareness of renewable energy among women, rising from 25% to 76% in Nalanda and Gaya. Renu Kumari, a 34-year-old entrepreneur from Nalanda, Bihar, operates a village eatery that serves as the primary source of income for her family, including her husband and five children. However, a significant portion of her profits was being directed toward covering monthly electricity expenses that usually reach Rs 2,000. 

Work with Rajasthan's camel herders: German scientist wins World Cookbook Award 2023

By Rosamma Thomas*  Gourmand World Cookbook Awards are the only awards for international food culture. This year, German scientist  Ilse Kohler Rollefson , founder of Camel Charisma, the first of India’s camel dairies, in Pali district of Rajasthan, won the award for her work with camel herders in Rajasthan, and for preparing for the UN International Year of Camelids, 2024. 

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Why is electricity tariff going up in India? Who is the beneficiary? A random reflection

By Thomas Franco*  Union Ministry of Power has used its power under Section 11 of the Electricity Act, 2003 to force States to import coal which has led to an increase in the cost of electricity production and every consumer is paying a higher tariff. In India, almost everybody from farmers to MSMEs are consumers of electricity.

'Pro-corporate agenda': Odisha crackdown on tribal slum dwellers fighting for land rights

By Our Representative  The civil rights network Campaign Against State Repression (CASR), even as condemning what it calls “brutal repression” on the Adivasi slum dwellers of Salia Sahi in Bhubaneshwar by the Odisha police, has said that the crackdown was against the tribals struggling for land rights in order to “stop the attempts at land-grab by the government.”

Deplorable, influential sections 'still believe' burning coal is essential indefinitely

By Shankar Sharma*  Some of the recent developments in the power sector, as some  recent news items show, should be of massive relevance/ interest to our policy makers in India. Assuming that our authorities are officially mandated/ committed to maintain a holistic approach to the overall welfare of all sections of our society, including the flora, fauna and general environment, these developments/ experiences from different parts of the globe should be clear pointers to the sustainable energy pathways for our people.

Hazrat Aisha’s age was 16, not 6: 'Weak' Hadith responsible for controversy

Sacred chamber where Prophet and Aisha used to live By Dr Mike Ghouse* Muslims must take the responsibility to end the age-old controversy about Hazrat Aisha’s age at the time of her marriage to the Prophet (pbuh) – it was 16, not 6 (minimum was 16, Max 23 per different calculations). The Hadiths published were in good faith, but no one ever checked their authenticity, and they kept passing on from scholar to scholar and book to book.  Thanks to 9/11, Muslims have started questioning and correcting the Hadiths, Seerah, and mistranslations of the Quran. Now, the Ulema have to issue an opinion, also known as Fatwa, to end it and remove those Hadith entries. Mustafa Akyol, a scholar of Islam, implores Muslims to stop deifying “the received traditions” and critically study their religious past, shedding rigid legalism and close-mindedness. Someone else used the phrase “copycat Muslims” to identify scholars who copied what was given to them and passed it on without researching or questioni