How to choose higher education wisely

Advise from HR

Just because I am holding a senior position in HR with L&T, I have been getting many requests from my relatives, friends,  acquaintances, to help their sons or daughters, who have freshly passed out from engineering college, to get job in L&T. The number of requests are huge. So many fresh engineers are unemployed, I could hardly be helped only a few of them to get job in L&T or in some other companies where I have contacts. I feel bad to say NO to many of the requests or for those whom I can't help. They get disappointed... I can understand. Parents invest their lifetime earned money just to see their sons or daughters in getting a degree in engineering.

They think that jobs are easily available for engineers. After interviewing many of them, I can't even tell them that your son or daughter do not even have minimum required technical knowledge. Getting first class or distinction has become so easy without having a fundamental knowledge of engineering. It's high time for parents to stop running behind engineering degrees.

USA produces around 1 lakh engineers per year for a $16 trillion economy.

India produces 15 lakhs engineers for a $2 trillion economy. 

The earlier mass recruiting sector was Manufacturing. It used to recruit from the core branches like Electrical, Mechanical, Civil etc. But, Manufacturing is relatively stagnant at 17% of the GDP. So the core branch placements have become very difficult.

The more recent mass recruiter was the IT sector. It grew from scratch to almost 5% of the GDP in a short time. IT Employed millions of engineers.

Now, IT is also saturating. Only good, skilled IT Engineers are in demand.

If you look at the sectoral composition of the Indian economy, most of the sectors do not need engineers. Tourism is 10% of the GDP, does not require engineers. The financial sector, Trade, Hotels and Restaurants do not require engineers. The requirement of engineers in Health, Education, Agriculture is also negligible.

More than 50% of the GDP has no role for Engineers. Still, most of the Indian youth are becoming Engineers. The situation is not sustainable.

Demand is low while supply is high. Over and above this, skill level of an average engineer is poor, almost its non-existent in many cases. If we leave aside the top 100–200 colleges, most fresh engineers have no idea of what they studied. Ask a fresh mechanical engineer, can s/he design a simple frame?

Today the situation is that most engineers are working in a field that has no connection to what they have studied in the college. This is a waste of resources.

The engineering degree does not come cheap. It costs about 10-15 lakhs. For poor parents, its a huge burden. When their son/daughter is not able to secure a job, they are devastated.

For the nation, you can calculate the loss. Leave around 1 lakh engineers that NASSCOM says are employable. The rest 14 lakhs have each wasted 10 lakhs of fees. That totals to around $20 Billion. Almost equal to the Government’s spending on healthcare. Over this, there is loss of human capital.

India needs to replan the whole engineering education system. Government need to cut down on the number of colleges and improve the quality in the rest.

Also, students should explore other career options than everyone becoming Engineers.

When it comes to education, a multitude of options are available today! From Aviation, to Hotel Management, Short Term Programs to big movie production courses, Data science, cyber security, Information Security, Cloud Technology Designing, Indian Armed Forces, Animation and VFX, Digital Marketing, Film Making, Technology Courses like SQL, PHP, Big Data, C, C++, etc. and much more!
For a majority of courses like these, there are entrance exams too, such as the NATA, CEED, NID entrance, NIFT entrance, NDA entrance, MBA Entrance, Hotel Management entrance, CET, NEET and many more! Here, the right training goes a long way in getting your child admission to their dream institute! Do you know what are the top career tracks of 2018 other than engineering?? See the following list.

1. Animation, VFX and Multimedia
2. Fashion Design, Event Management and Interior decoration.
3. Aeronautical and Aviation
4.  Film making, Script Writing and Acting.
5. Engineering computer, IT, cloud and data science.
6. Networking, information security.
7. Beauty, Modelling and Cosmetology
8. Fitness, dietitian and nutritionist
9. Foreign languages.
10. Music and Dance.

So, please share this with your relatives /friends / 12th pass students and r them in planning their education and career appropriately than madly running after engineering admissions!!

Thanks To

Dr. Sunil Jajit HR L&T