Every year around a fifth to a third of the million students graduating from engineering colleges in India run the risk of being jobless. But, what’s the reason behind the lack of jobs for India’s overflowing technical talent pool? Why engineers are struggling to survive in the challenging market? Well, the real story behind the difficulties in finding jobs by engineers is the skill shortage/skill gap.
Acute skill shortage and armies of the unemployed go side by side in the country. It seems the problem is that of employability and not that of unemployment. Hundreds of millions of young engineers, who will flood the job market in the coming decade, is in danger of sliding into a lopsided paunch because tech companies are demanding engineers to think out-of-the-box.
The reason for this skill gap theory may be the problem in the quality of education provided by private or top engineering colleges in India or the hiring criteria changed by IT, tech or other companies. Whatever may be the reason, but the fact is that the huge number of engineers passing out every year is facing a bleak future.
In this demand-supply knowledge gap scenario, a look at the education system of engineering colleges reveals that graduates are obsessed with textbook education and white-collar dreams. Part of the skills gap problem is that only a small percentage of Indian colleges encourage engineers to think creatively or outside the box. Ironically, it is becoming even harder to create a continuous pipeline of talent.
Industry experts attribute the skill gap problem to the outdated academic practices and the lack of training facilities for teaching core employability skills to engineers. Now, employers are not looking to hire college graduates right out of college. They don’t want to waste their time and money in providing training to college pass outs. In fact, they want experienced candidates, who can contribute immediately to the company processes.
In the highly competitive environment, employers are looking for candidates, who have better communication and professional skills. But, the marking system and rote learning strategy are producing graduates, who are more like a robot than engineers with analytical skills. Today, engineers lack cognitive skills related to the engineering professions as well as the ability to design and conduct experiments because of the loopholes in the education system of engineering colleges.
Universities and educational institutions have not updated their syllabi in tune with the high speed changes taking place in the global market. As a result, the students, who are churned out during interviews, are not equipped to meet the current industry requirements. Graduates do meet the demand for lower-order thinking skills, but they fall short in meeting the demand for higher-order thinking skills. So, here are few suggestions for engineering institutions:
- Refocus on their assessment and teaching-learning processes.
- Understand the importance of soft skills.
- Arrange more industry workshops or tour to local companies.
- Start classes for enhancing technical skills of students.
- Give more importance to higher-order skills, such as analyzing and solving problems instead of lower-order thinking skills such as understanding and learning.
The skill gap problem in engineers could threaten the economic growth plans of India and affect its growing market. In response to these challenges, many IT, manufacturing and tech companies have intensified their academic interventions to remove the knowledge shortage problem from the Indian education system. They are partnering with engineering colleges in order to provide fresh graduates the necessary skills required in companies. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have taken initiatives to upgrade faculty members, provide internships, improve curriculum and start research-based studies at colleges.
In order to bridge the skill gap with the global market and industries, we have to rethink about the education system of engineering colleges. By training students for the jobs of the future and allowing them to think creatively can play an important role in plugging the talent gap in the years to come.
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