There was a time when engineering aspirants were scrambling for seats. Remember the years following the IT boom of the Nineties? Colleges mushroomed, students rushed for admissions and jobs were in abundance.
Then there was the global financial crisis of 2008, the problem of plenty, and slowly Brand BE/BTech lost its sheen. Basically, the bust.
Now, half the campuses are empty, teachers have been laid off, middlemen are selling seats, Haryana is an “engineering graveyard” and no one wants to hire the graduates emerging from the private colleges which mushroomed in the last two decades.
Why is engineering facing a crisis?
A series of investigative reports in The Indian Express – BTech (Fail) – delves into the issue and narrates how the fortunes of the once much-in-demand branch of studies have fallen, why the quality of education has dipped and graduates unskilled even after years of study. It looks at engineering studies in various states in the past 20 years, the fall in enrollments, shutting down of ghost colleges and Karnataka as a case study for having the least empty seats. The reports also give policy prescriptions from experts to revive engineering education in the country.
Of the 15.5 lakh BE/BTech seats in India’s 3,291 engineering colleges, over half – 51 per cent – were vacant in 2016-17, the report said, quoting data from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Also, about 8 lakh BE/BTech students graduated last year, but only about 40 per cent got jobs via campus placements. Notably, campus placements have been under 50 per cent for five years now.
One Haryana college, according to the study, did not get even one new admission to any of the five departments of engineering – computer science, civil, mechanical, electrical and electronics – in the last four years.
Tellingly, IIT-Kanpur chairman RC Bhargava says: “Most graduates don’t know the basics of engineering… Most people will tell you that 80 per cent of engineering graduates are not employable.”
The investigation holds gaps in regulation, alleged corruption, poor infrastructure, non-existent linkages with industry, and the absence of a technical ecosystem responsible for the devaluation of the engineering degree – after analysing AICTE enrollment data from 2012-13 to 2016-17, visiting 10 colleges among those under the scanner for low admissions and talking to principals, students, academics and experts.
From 87,059 BTech and MTech seats in 1990-91, the number has reportedly shot up to 16.62 lakh in 2017-18 – 18 times in less than three decades. Add to this higher cost of education and lower returns from jobs. Also, just 10 states – Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, UP, Telangana, Karnataka, MP, Gujarat, Kerala, and Haryana – account for 80 per cent of the total engineering seats in the country (and also for 80 per cent of the total vacant seats).
A study by Aspiring Minds, quoted by the website Entrackr, said almost 95 per cent of engineers can’t code, ruing the state of private colleges, low-quality education and outdated syllabus without practical knowledge. “The government needs to look into this as many institutes in the country have been teaching anything in the name of engineering. They should be closed down or action should be taken to improve the education system,” Prof RG Rao of IIT Delhi is quoted as saying in the same report.
The Indian Express report says “the pace of expansion of technical education was unsustainable and explosion in the number of private institutions was fuelled more by speculative rather than real demand”.
Desperate colleges are resorting to fee concessions, diluting admission criteria, hiring fresh graduates as faculty and even paying middlemen to lure aspirants (Bihar with few educational opportunities is a favoured hunting ground!)
Among the solutions proposed is halting the expansion of colleges, revising syllabus, making bad colleges shut shop and focusing on the good ones.
Maybe engineers will some day be in demand again.