India has the world’s largest engineering education system with over 1.8 million engineering seats on offer. But the amazing numbers hide a range of issues like questionable graduate quality, grave shortage of good quality faculty, crisis in placements, poor research and publication activity and an alarming reduction in the number of aspirants. We examine the overall scenario of the engineering education system in the country.

1. 1careers360 research
Careers360
Status of
Engineering
Education
in India
Will it
implode?
Status of Education report series
February, 2014

2. 2careers360 research 3careers360 research
Status Report Engineering 2014
India has the world’s largest engineering education system
with over 1.8 million engineering seats on offer. But the
amazing numbers hide a range of issues like questionable
graduate quality, grave shortage of good quality faculty, crisis
in placements, poor research and publication activity and an
alarming reduction in the number of aspirants. We examine
the overall scenario of the engineering education system in
the country.
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 03
Part 1: Engineering: Origins and growth............................................................................................................................................................ 04
1.1 Engineering growth story
1.2 Vacant seats on the rise
1.3 Regional imbalance continues
1.4 It is all about BE/B.Tech
1.5 Faculty quality: Long way to go
Part 2: Part 2- Output quality............................................................................................................................................................................... 07
2.1 Research and industry interface
2.2 What purpose do citations have?
2.3 Accreditation
2.4 Innovation and incubation
2.5 Specializations
2.6 Regulations in a limbo
2.7 Is the system heading for a crisis?
2.8 Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Executive Summary
Contents
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Editor: B Mahesh Sarma Printed at: GH Prints Pvt. Ltd., A-256, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-1, New Delhi -110020 published from: 6, Panchsheel Shopping Centre, New Delhi–110017.
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Assist. Art Director Rajesh Chawla
“There have been so many students of IIT-Kanpur who have achieved so much on the world
stage. IITs are the equal to or better than most of the world’s best.”
Prof. Indranil Manna, Director, IIT Kanpur, October 2013
“Not more than 17% of the engineering graduates in 2012 are employable and have the skills
required for the ICT sector.”
Employability of engineering graduates report,
Aspiringminds.in, February 2013
The story of Indian engineering education system oscillates between the overconfidence of an
IIT to the humongous unemployability of most of the graduates from Tier-2 engineering colleges
onwards. With over 1.8 million+ seats on offer at the BE/B.Tech level, India has come a long way
from the first engineering school set up in Roorkee in 1847 (the college was renamed as The
Thomason College of Civil Engineering in 1854).The engineering education system in the country
displays seven major trends.
Firstly there is an exponential increase in the number of institutions from around 1500 in 2006
to over 3986 in 2013. Add the deemed universities, IITs and NITs, the total number of institutions
would be over 4000. In contrast to most other countries like China, Brazil and USA, the average
number of students per institute would be less than 500. The large number of very small institu-
tions is causing adverse economies of scale.
The third observable trend is that the education system is completely skewed in favor of under-
graduates while Master’s and Doctoral-level students are almost negligible (it was extremely glar-
ing up to the start of the new millennium, after which the gap has started tapering). Fourthly, the
system as a whole lacks research focus. Barring the top 50-60 institutions, publications in globally
accepted refereed journals is negligible and less said the better about patents and industry-led
research. But the good tiding is the rise in awareness about the relevance and importance of pub-
lications and sponsored research, particular by select private sector players.
The fifth major factor stems from the recent Supreme Court judgment on affiliated colleges,
wherein the governance of technical education has moved from AICTE to UGC.The consequences
of a transient regulatory regime would be felt in the coming years. Another issue that plagues the
system is that with almost negligible PhD production, lack of high quality faculty is almost crip-
pling the system with detrimental effect on the quality of fresh graduates. Most reports suggest
that nearly 65-80% of fresh graduates are unemployable. Finally, while production of BE/B.Tech
graduates would be exponential, IT sector, the largest consumer of such graduates is slowing
down.With the overall economy being sluggish, there is a real threat of a swamping of the market
with engineers in the coming years.
We examine each of these issues in detail.
INTRODUCTION

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Status Report Engineering 2014
India’s engineering education journey in modern times began
with one student in Survey School, Chennai in 1794, which
later evolved into College of Engineering, Guindy, a con-
stituent college of Anna University, Chennai. This, along with
Roorkee College (originally Thomason College, now IIT Roor-
kee) and College of Engineering, Pune are the three oldest
engineering schools not only in India, but in Asia. Between
then and early 1990s, engineering education in the country
was primarily dominated by public sector institutions.
India has many kinds of engineering institutes, namely:
a) Institutions that are departments of universities like the
College of Engineering, Pune which is a constituent col-
lege of Pune University
b) Colleges which are affiliated to a university e.g. Netaji Sub-
ash Institute of Technology, affiliated to Delhi University
c) Technical universities that offer specialized programmes in
engineering and technology like Anna University, Chennai
d) Institutes of National Importance like Indian Institutes of
Technology and SLIET, Sangrur
e) and a specified set of institutions that have been conferred
degree granting powers, named Deemed Universities.
The National Institutes of Technology (previously called
Regional Engineering Colleges) come under this category.
Many private sector institutes like BITS Pilani also fall in the
same category.
Out of these five sets of institutions, the last three have degree
granting powers of their own.
1.1 Engineering growth story
India’s engineering growth story began in the early years of
the 21st century. Between 1947 to 2006 the country’s sanc-
tioned intake of engineering seats rose from about 2500 to
about 5.5 lakhs in 2006. And the number of institutions grew
from about 25 in 1947 to 1500 in 2006. It is in the last 10 years
that the country’s engineering infrastructure grew by leaps
and bounds. As Table 1.0 shows, the number of institutions
grew from 1511 to 3498, an over 130% growth in a decade. But
this number is slightly misleading since AICTE, the regulatory
body for engineering education does not regulate the IITs,
NITs, Universities and Deemed Universities. If one adds the 16
IITs, 30 NITs, 74 Deemed Universities that offer engineering
and 118 private universities with engineering departments,
the number of institutions would be about 4000+.
Table 1.0
Growth of institutions in the last seven years
Year Engineering Architecture
2006-07 1511 116
2007-08 1668 116
2008-09 2388 116
2009-10 2972 106
2010-11 3222 108
2011-12 3393 116
2012-13 3498 120
The exponential growth in institutions has also resulted in
substantial increase in the number of seats (see Table 1.1).
From around 0.55 million, the number of seats has risen
substantially. It would be about 1.8 million if we account for
the addition in 7 years in AICTE-approved institutions and
also add the intake in IITs (10,000), NITs (16,000) and 0.2 mil-
lion seats available in Deemed Universities and Engineering
Schools of the Private Universities.
Table 1.1
Growth of student intake in the last seven years
Year Engineering Architecture
2006-07 550,986 4543
2007-08 653,290 4543
2008-09 841,018 4543
2009-10 1,071,896 4133
2010-11 1,314,594 4991
2011-12 1,485,894 5491
2012-13 1,761,976 5996
According to a recentWorld Bank report, what is unique about
the Indian system is that not only is this growth dominated
by the private sector, it is also very fragmented. For example;
a comparable system like China which has less than half the
number of institutions compared to India produces almost
Part 1- ENGINEERING:
origins and growth
double the number of undergraduates at about 4 million per
annum. And the average number of intake per institution lies
at about 450 in India and around 7300 per institution in China.
(See Tables 1.2 and 1.3).
Table 1.2
Average no. of institutions providing Engineering Degrees
Country Public Private Total
United States 228 131 359
United Kingdom 115 115
Japan 79 148 227
China 572
Brazil 117 444 561
India 209 3184 3393
Russian Federation 390 92 482
Table 1.3
Number of Engineering students per institution
Country Students
United States 2213
United Kingdom 1275
Japan 2128
China 7331
Brazil 920
India 445
Russian Federation 3302
This kind of a fragmented growth has tremendous implica-
tions for all aspects of engineering education. This fact has
been acknowledged and highlighted in the Planning Com-
mission’s Approach Paper for the 12th Five Year Plan. But the
effort to increase the number of seats is even now fraught
with tremendous bureaucratic hurdles and there exists an
upper limit to the number of seats that can be sanctioned
for a college, which was under the purview of the AICTE until
recently. The unbridled growth in the number of institutions
has also resulted in another issue, which is increase in the
number of unfulfilled seats.
1.2Vacant seats on the rise
The regulatory agency AICTE reports that about 15-20% of
the total number of 15 lakh sanctioned seats are lying vacant
across the country. The state-wise reports are all the more
alarming. For example; Tamil Nadu alone reported vacancies
to the tune of 80,940 seats after the last day of counselling
in 2013. The scenario is the same in other states with large
engineering college population like Maharasthra (See Table
1.4), Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh reported
the worst figures of over 1.1 lakh vacant seats even in the 2.37
lakh quota seats.
Table 1.4
Vacant Engineering seats in Maharashtra
University Vacancy
Dr B A Marathwada University 4202
Gondwana University 768
Mumbai University 3241
North Maharashtra University 3285
Pune University 15201
Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University 8862
S R T Marathwada University 1571
Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University 3972
Shivaji University 5934
Solapur University 3567
Total number of seats vacant 50603
On the other hand, nearly 1.4 million aspirants registered
for JEE Mains exam, which make them eligible for applying
to several thousand seats available in NITs and other select
institutions that admit through the exam. Select private insti-
tutions like BITS Pilani, VIT Vellore, Amrita, MAHE and SRM
have seen substantial rise in the number of applicants for
their seats on offer. And IITs (including ISM Dhanbad) as usual
saw tremendous competition for the nearly 10,000-odd seats
available across 17 institutions, old and new. Thus India now
is in a unique situation wherein acute competition exists for
institutions in the Top Tier, whereas most bottom-tier institu-
tions are not able to fill even 10% of their sanctioned capacity.
Yet another factor that contributes to vacancies is the mul-
tiple entrance exams and differential counselling phases
conducted by various institutions for BE/B.Tech admission.
For example; even the venerable IITs and NITs have reported
vacancies in the last admission season. In response to a Parlia-
mentary question the Ministry of HRD confirmed that about
4% of seats were lying vacant in the academic year 2013. This
is happening because the counselling for IITs and NITs happen
almost simultaneously and hence students try to retain seats
in both institutions with a hope to get the best option. This
results in a good number of seats falling vacant in engineer-
ing institutions.
1.3 Regional imbalance continues
As Table 1.5 shows, availability of engineering education in
the east and north of India is still substantially less than the
south. The three southern states namely Tamil Nadu, Andhra
Pradesh, and Karnataka together account for over 40% of the
total number of colleges in the country and about 37% of the
sanctioned intake. Eastern India just accounts for 7% of the
total intake. Even within regions, disparities exist. For example;
in Uttar Pradesh, two locations in the district of Gautam Buddh
Nagar - Noida and Greater Noida - account for nearly 30% the
sanctioned intake.

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Status Report Engineering 2014
Table 1.5
Regional imbalance (zone-wise)
Zone No. of Colleges
Central 309
East 314
West 730
North 843
South 1745
Total 3941
1.4 It is all about BE/B.Tech
The predominant constituent of the engineering system is
the absolute lack of postgraduate and doctoral studies pro-
grammes across the country. At an aggregate level asTable 1.7
shows, the number of PG-level students are far less compared
to the undergraduate-level students pursuing engineering.
According to Banerjee and Muley (2009), India awarded about
20,000 engineering Master’s degrees in 2006. Considering the
fact that enrolment more than doubled in 2013 and based on
the data available state-wise from the AICTE portal, one could
conclude that nearly 85,000 students are enrolled in M.Tech
programmes in the country. And according to the figures
available with Department of Science andTechnology asTable
1.6 below shows, just about 1678 doctorates were awarded to
Indian graduates.
In other words, the country produces very few Master’s and
doctoral candidates in engineering and technology. This has
disastrous consequences for quality of teaching, research,
and student quality as we will see in the subsequent sections.
1.5 Faculty quality: Long way to go
The AICTE database has provided a long list of faculty mem-
bers employed discipline-wise across its affiliated colleges.
But since it is not categorized as Assistant, Associate, or Full
Professors, the database is useless for any interpretation. But
considering the fact that cumulatively India has produced
about 1.26 lakh M.Techs in the last 40 years, discounting about
12,000 PhDs, the total M.Techs would aggregate at close to
1.14 lakh. Assuming 50-75% of them would work in academia,
the total number of faculty with an M.Tech would be around
0.57 to 0.80 lakh. Also assuming that an average engineering
college has four branches, the total number of departments
encompassing these branches in engineering colleges would
be 16,000. For 4000-odd colleges, that would make an average
of 4 M.Techs per branch of 60 students. But it is the doctoral-
level faculty that is abysmally low. With just over a cumulative
stock of 20,000 doctorates in the country, assuming 50%
work in academics, that would be about 10,000 faculty, one
for every branch in each college. Going by the norm of 1:2:6
faculty for each branch, and assuming a student-faculty ratio
of 1:20, an average college of 240 students would need 12 fac-
ulty members. And since each department must have a Head
who is a doctoral candidate, there would be a gap of about
45,000 PhDs, as on date. In other words, most engineering col-
leges in the country do not meet the requisite faculty norms
at all, which partly explains the poor quality of students who
come out of these colleges.
Table 1.6
Doctorate degrees awarded faculty-wise (2006-07 to 2010-11)
Faculty 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11
Science Technology disciplines (A) (Number)
Science 4605 4915 5165 4619 5271
Engineering/Technology 969 1351 1278 1449 1682
Table 1.7
Out-turn of scientific and technical personnel from universities in India 2005-2010
Degree/Year 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
ME/M.Tech(Engg) 16,380 17,494 18,158 20,506 21,552 27,609
Source :University Grants Commission (UGC) University Development in India (Basic facts figures - 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 2010 manuscripts)
Table 2.1
Engineering-Public
University/Institute
Publication Count
(WoS): 2000-11
Patents Granted Patents Applied
IIT Delhi 8383 17 78
IIT Kharagpur 9739 9
IIT Kanpur 7202 5 66
IIT Madras 7366 2 23
IIT Bombay 7214 36 114
IIT Roorkee 3894 16
Anna University, Chennai 4353 4 26
Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad 613 7 5
National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 758 2
Bengal Engineering Science Uni (BESU), Shibpur 830 3
Table 2.2
Engineering-Private
University/Institute
Publication
Count (WoS):
2000-11
Patents
Granted
Patents
Applied
Birla Institute of Technology Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani) 1059 8 3
VIT University (Vellore Institute of Technology), Vellore 1042 1 5
Manipal University, Manipal 734 3
Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, Ranchi 672 8 20
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore 729 36
Bharati Vidyapeeth, Pune 462 1 7
Thapar University (Thapar Institute of Engineering Technology), Patiala 267 1
International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H), Hyderabad 212 8
Jaypee University of Information Technology, Solan 196 1 2
Amity University, Noida 149 121
What is more alarming is the quality of academic output and
industry interface that the colleges in the Indian engineer-
ing system boast off. Research is limited to the top 100-odd
colleges in public and private sector and less said the better
about their industry interface. Most institutions still operate
under the premise of being a training institution rather than
a full-fledged academic enterprise.
Part 2- Output quality
2.1 Research and industry interface
Not many of us would know that the blueprint for the estab-
lishment of IITs - the NR Sarkar Committee Interim Report
(1946) - suggested MIT in USA as a model institution for set-
ting up four higher technical institutes in East, West, South
and North. Even after six-and-a-half decades, IITs are yet to
attain the academic diversity that MIT boasts off, let alone

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Status Report Engineering 2014
the stature. But public institutions are still the most sought
after places for pursuing B.Tech/BE. Give a few years and one
would see the new Indian Institutes of Science Education and
Research (IISERs) emerge in the premier list.
In terms of research as Table 2.1 shows, IITs are the best per-
formers. IIT Kharagpur is unparalleled in publication count as
is IIT Bombay in granted and filed patents in India. IIT Delhi
and ISM Dhanbad also score well on both granted and filed
patents. The 7 mature IITs aggregate 45,000 publications in
last 12 years in Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science database.
The state engineering universities have made no mark barring
the venerable Anna University, which stands out. But not more
than top 60 engineering colleges are active on international
refereed publication circuit. In fact our research informs that
the number of publications drops drastically to single digits
once we cross the top 20 college’s barrier. The 67th college in
our list has zero publications and it goes complete downhill as
2.3 Accreditation
The advantage with an accredited institution is that a student
has some assurance of receiving quality education and gain-
ing recognition vis-à-vis other institutions that have not been
assessed by an accreditation agency. The employers who
recruit from campuses give recognition to accredited insti-
tutes since they are reassured about the course credits and
degrees earned. In other words, accreditation is an affirmation
that an institute provides education of a certain quality (as per
the scores or grades obtained) which the general public has
the right to expect. The National Assessment and Accredita-
tion Council (NAAC) - an autonomous body established by the
University Grants Commission (UGC) - assesses and accredits
Indian institutions of higher education. Since NAAC accredi-
tation is not mandatory, out of 700-odd degree awarding
institutions in India, only 174 (and 5054 colleges) have got
NAAC accreditation as on 5th January 2013. The engineering
institutes/universities with engineering department that have
a score of 3.0 plus are given in Table 2.3.
2.4 Innovation and incubation
Over the last decade, the debate on the role that engineering
institutions should occupy in promoting their research and
development output has significantly intensified.The present
system of technical education in India is increasingly seen to
emphasise the need to create institutional mechanisms that
foster innovations in an academic setting.There are numerous
offshoots or developments that are indicative of a college’s
engagement in fostering industry interaction efficiently. In
India, dynamic formations like incubation units, spin-offs,
patent cells, science technology entrepreneurs parks, tech-
nology transfer offices, university-industry consortia and so
on are exemplars of the same. Parallels are drawn from
configurations in the US such as Route 128 and Silicon Valley
where a number of firms have vibrant linkages with academia.
However, given the large number of engineering institutes
that India has, very few have made a progress in this direction.
Some of the noteworthy institutions and their achievements
are given in Table 2.4.
2.5 Specializations
One major consequence of the discipline-wise sanction sche-
ma practiced by AICTE is that the colleges began to invent
new subjects to increase the sanctioned strength. A study of
over 2400 colleges by Careers360 shows that nearly 700+ dif-
ferent specializations are on offer in BE/B.Tech level. For exam-
ple; Computer Science and InformationTechnology alone saw
over 27 different combinations on offer. Even after clubbing
related disciplines together our database currently lists over
126 different branches on offer in India’s engineering colleges.
Just as an illustration we present here a set of combinations
that constitute electronics engineering discipline.
Table 2.5
Discipline Variants
Applied Electronics
Applied Electronics Instrumentation
Electronics and Communications
Electrical Electronics
Electronics Instrumentation
Electronics communications
Electronics Telecommunicaitons
Electronics Communications Telecom
Electronics
Electrical
Table 2.3
Engg Institute/University with Engineering Dept NAAC-2012
BITS Pilani, Pilani 3.71
Andhra University, Visakhapatnam 3.65
Jadavpur University, Kolkata 3.61
SRM University, Chennai 3.5
International Institute of Information Technol-
ogy (IIIT-H), Hyderabad
3.4
KIIT University, Bhubaneswar 3.36
Symbiosis International University, Pune 3.35
Osmania University, Hyderabad 3.31
Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 3.25
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University,
Coimbatore
3.2
GITAM, Visakhapatnam 3.2
Bharati Vidyapeeth Pune 3.16
Thapar University, Patiala 3.15
Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Agra 3.14*
Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture,
Technology Sc. (AAI), Allahabad
3.14*
Amity University Noida 3.13
Shiksha‘O’Anusandhan, Bhubaneswar 3.1
University of Pune 3.1
Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University,
New Delhi
3.05*
Banasthali University, Banasthali 3.02
* updated in October 2013
Table 2.4
Incubation Facility Institute Estd Incubatee Graduated
FITT - TBIU IIT Delhi 1992 13 16
SINE IIT Bombay 2004 15 25
MCIIE IIT BHU 2008 10 2
EKTA IC WBUT, Kolkata 2006 9 2
STEP-NITK NIT Surathkal 1994 5 50
DCEI DAIICT Gandhinagar 2010 5 1
AII Amity, Noida 2008 38 10
STEP-TIETS IIT Kharagpur 1986 50 21
RTBI-IITM Research Park IIT Madras 2006 26 34
TBI-KIIT KIIT, Bhubhaneswar 2010 17 6
far as patents and publications in all the rest of the 3600-odd
colleges in the country are concerned.
The private sector too has not fared well. In the last decade-
and-a-half, many of the established engineering colleges
obtained Deemed to be University status. Some of them are
VIT, Vellore; Karunya University, Coimbatore; Jaypee Institute
of Information Technology Noida and KIIT University, Bhub-
haneswar among others (Table 2.2). Barring a few, many
private universities are constrained by a lack of academic flex-
ibility. BITS Pilani is an established player here. IIIT Hyderabad,
however, is in the forefront owing to the highest NAAC score
of 3.4 among private engineering universities. The fact that
out of the 74-odd deemed universities that focus on engineer-
ing domain, only three universities have publications worth
their status shows the distance most of these universities
need to travel.
Among private universities Shiv Nadar University, Dadri; Jay-
pee University of Information Technology, Solan; Dhirubhai
Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Tech-
nology, Gandhinagar, are some of the engineering-focused
institutions that are young and look promising. The IIITs set
up in PPP mode have taken off in a big way and some of them
like IIIT Hyderabad and IIIT Bangalore are ahead of the rest.
2.2What purpose do citations have?
Apart from giving credit to the creator of an original piece of
work, say in the form of a concept or theory, and helping the
readers identify the source of the body of knowledge; the key
purpose of citations is to provide evidence that the scholarly
work is well-researched. If Prof. Kumar from XYZ University
has published a novel idea in a journal, the number of times
his paper is cited (referred) shows that his argument is thor-
oughly researched and that scholars who have cited him have
addressed the critical authorities relevant to the issues.
For an institute, its research influence is known to be excellent
if the published work by the university community (usually
faculty members and researchers) is cited the most by scholars
around the world. So, if an institute has an average citation
count of 3.5 in a three-year span between 2011 and 2013 as
indicated in Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science, it implies that
an article from the institute is cited on an average 3.5 times
annually. The institutes offering UG in engineering with high
average citation include: IIT Bhubhaneswar (5.05), North East-
ern Regional Institute of Science Technology, Itanagar (3.5),
and IIT Ropar (3.48). Others such as IIT Guwahati, IIT Roorkee,
IIT Bombay, IIT Patna, IIT Kanpur, ICT, Mumbai, Jadavpur
University, IIT Delhi, Bengal Engineering Science Univer-
sity, Shibpur, NIT Rourkela IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur and BITS
Pilani have an average citation of more than 2.0. BIT Mesra;
KIIT Bhubhaneswar; Thapar University; VIT Vellore; Amity Uni-
versity Noida; UPES Dehradun; Amrita Vishwavidyapeetham,
Coimbatore; Manipal University and IIIT Hyderabad also figure
in the top private institutes with above average citation.

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Status Report Engineering 2014
2.6 Regulations in a limbo
Thanks to the lacunae in the drafting of the AICTE Act, which
was used to deadly effect in the Bhartidasan Versus AICTE
case, the governance system in technical education has been
extremely skewed. Because of the judgment, the IITs and NITs,
Universities and Deemed Universities were outside the pur-
view of the regulator, that is, AICTE. This has resulted in a sce-
nario wherein nearly 2.5 lakh seats and about 40000+ faculty
members were not even in the regulator’s informational radar.
Now with the recent Supreme Court judgement, the entire
affiliated colleges system too has been brought under the
regulatory ambit of University Grants Commission. If there is
no further legal intervention by the Ministry of HRD then the
AICTE body would be virtually defunct with only polytechnics
under its regulatory ambit.
The UGC, which has never gotten around to regulate indi-
vidual colleges, if its draft regulations are anything to go by,
has left the issue of academic standards to individual universi-
ties and no mechanism to identify and penalize defaulters at
the college level is to be seen. The nation is in for a prolonged
period of academic uncertainty if the regime change goes
through.
2.7 Is the system heading for a crisis?
In addition to the issues of access, equity and excellence that
we have identified with respect to the 4000+ engineering col-
leges and universities in the country, the most alarming is the
fact that each year, from 2017 onwards, 1.0+ million engineers
would come of these institutions. Each of them is being sold
a dummy, a promise, a dream – of a great job in an MNC or an
Indian software major – HCL, HP, IBM, TCS, Infosys, Accenture,
to name a few. These companies fan dreams and aspirations.
Moving forward, we all should expect and be prepared for the
job market to be weak. The reasons are as follows:
1. Recruitment is directly related to growth in the economy.
Our growth has fallen by close to half, from about 9% to
4.5% in 5 years flat. This has a huge bearing on a develop-
ing economy like India.
2. Most software companies have over the years learnt to
retain good talent. They are smarter and wiser and their
HR policies are designed to retain talent. This has resulted
in employee turnover coming down in such companies.
3. The job market is uncertain.This has resulted in employees
becoming less adventuresome. They don’t experiment.
They don’t leave jobs. Result – lower employee turnover.
All this means that the big boys of the IT Industry are likely to
recruit lesser and lesser. A conservative estimate would peg
the current recruitment to be no more than 300,000 students
being placed form engineering campuses this year, includ-
ing all those by the big boys of IT, SMEs, MSMEs etc. Add to
this about 200,000 students who may aspire to study further.
That leaves about 1.2 million students without a job. Nothing
to engage them! In 10 years time, there would be 10 million
Engineering students, qualified but unemployed.
What we call a demographic dividend would soon turn into
a disaster, a nightmare. One is not even sure if the mandarins
in the HRD ministry are bothered, or have a plan of action to
counter this.
Add to this the possibility of some of them having taken an
education loan. If a student takes a Rs. 10 lakh education loan,
by the time he passes out after 4 years, the loan would have
become about 16 lakhs. At a 15% interest rate, the interest
payment alone would be 2.40 lakhs or Rs. 20,000 per month.
Just the interest! This will result in defaults in loan repayment
and maybe social unrest. Our banking system would be
really tested with these defaults. Already, more than Rs. 50,000
crores of education loans are under stress.
2.8 Conclusion
The root cause of all these problems is the way the system
has sold engineering education. It is sold as an employment
guaranteed course. The selling points have always been big
companies, salary packages, and excellent jobs! That selling
point is bound to bite us, and it would soon, if it hasn’t already
done. What explains the fact that a student taking Civil Engi-
neering or Biotechnology or Metallurgy joins Infosys, HCL or
Wipro and ends up with a coding job? Isn’t engineering meant
to be a professional qualification, leading to working in one’s
chosen field or profession?
We need to realize that we are failing the future of this country
in pursuit of our selfish motives. We are failing the youth. We
are selling dreams knowing fully well that they are unlikely to
be fulfilled. Fake placements, wrong and exaggerated claims
will come with repercussions. Obsolete curriculum, archaic
rules and regulations, profiteering, greed would cost this
nation.
The time to respond is now, for tomorrow may be too late.

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