Monday, April 17, 2006

India's Questionable Employability Status






A recent survey in a popular daily has been published about India's looming employability crisis in the coming years, amongst several other magazines that keep portraying a glorified job market in Bangalore, Pune and Chennai. The article primarily focussed on the kind of jobs that engineering graduates from Chennai are offered.

The reality is that based on a survey report by "Mapping of Man Power Skills for Tamil Nadu-2015", 43% of BE grads are unable to find suitable paid positions even after 2-3 years of completing their degrees.

The study showed clearly that the state's manpower requirements are not on par with the employability crisis that the engineering talet pool is facing. The reasons for such a finding is attributed to several factors, the top one being that there is a lack of an integrated system to manage the quality of education from high school to the post graduate level in the state.

So, what happens to this kind of an engineering graduate class pool-

20% of them found jobs outside the state, esp in Bangalore for Computer Science and Electronics.

7% of the diploma holders, AMIE and BE grad in Mechanical, Chemical etc. settled for jobs after 1 year or more of job hunting for low paying jobs in and around Tamil Nadu.

The remaining engineering folks found jobs with BPO and financial services, call centers changing their fields entirely.

Reasons-
1. Lack of one system to manage talent versus opportunity in the job market
2. Varying standards across educational institutions and lack of syllabus updates with respect to the industry needs and job market
3. Absolute poor communication between industry and academic folks except during campus interviews
4. Improper practical exposure in colleges to face real challenges in an industry.


Would be interested to hear your thoughts.............

10 comments:

Smugam said...

My opinion is Education system in India does not encourage creativity , project work and having fun while learning .

Marks , ranking competition takes the fun out of learning .

Second factor is parents influencing children to either an engineer or doctor.If you do not have passion for the field of work you choose , you can never be good at it . My guess is many engineers , programmers who are struggling to get a job might have wanted to be an actor , a musician ,a journalist ...but is forced to be an engineer becoz every one is .Have more to write will BRB

Ram C said...

Changes are required in the education system, prior to establishing a better link between that system and job market..

Then only the saleablility will increase.

mitr_bayarea said...

shiv_shankar-
absolutely agree with your thoughts in the first line.

Creativity and application oriented study with an understanding of the concept is highly lacking.

ram-
yes, we keep saying that and every new govt that comes wants to upgrade the syllabus and add in tamil or take out tamil as the medium of instruction, also so many deemed universities etc. named after every old tamil party leaders etc. just screws up the education system more. No one is more concerned about the quality and improving education to meet global standards.

Me too said...

Like fashion trends, every few years, education trends changes in our country! Like Shiv Shankar mentioned, it is not what the students' interest lies but what is hot that everybody flocks to.

Blabber-blogger said...

I am not sure if the education system in india can be blamed entirely. I have certainly seen my share of american students. The fundamental and primary education system in india is still the best i would say. (Upto 12th that is.)The diverse range of things taught. yes, its cumbersome and lot of stress. But that is due to the constant pressure to rank well in the scale of acheivements. Not allowing emergence of creativity and personal authentication.

Vocational and personalised development of skills and taking up occupation there after is a flaw. Sure. But i think things are changing. more people taking up things that they like, but they also have to see if it pays well. Passion in some occupation and making the passion your livelyhood is a personal thing. keeping both is a personal management thing.

mitr_bayarea said...

me_too- yes, agree with you that students flock to the most popular course of study than what their strength, talent etc.lies in

presanna-yes, true.

nyneishia-i don't agree that the fundamental and primary indian education system is far better than in the US.

In the US, learning is a fun experience as well as an enriching one. Elementary school is probably easy going, but the work load picks up as you go higher up in middle school and then the high school work load is extremely intense and similar to the 11th and 12th folks in India.

Just imagine, if the US school system is not good, then how come US colleges like Harvard, Stanford etc. have high standards and if these kids don't do well in schools, how come they manage the college education. Its only these majority kids who make it to the top Ivy League schools and not the Indian ones. Even when we come over here for grad school, we find it hard to cope for the first semester than the students here.

I strongly feel that the kids here come out more well rounded both in education, personality, culture etc. out of school than in India.

Smugam said...

1. Biggest factor is choosing a career is salary . With the pay average highly skewed in the IT sector lot of indians are attracted towards it.In any profession only the top candisates make it big while others are left on the bay trying to make it big .

2. Indian IT industry is service based ,innovation , lack of creativity and less risk taking nauture being the general attitude we lack innovators .With immense talent pool we should be able to spear head the next generation devices and research which will create more employment opportunities .

3.Defence research and deveopment can be taken by private companies which will develop Missile , Rocket and space technologies for commerical use on the lines of US companies like Northrop , Raytheon , Boeing and Xerox .

mitr_bayarea said...

shiv_shankar: quite true, Indians flock towards IT cos it pays well and with some basic programming and s/ware knowledge along with our English speaking skills, IT is accessible as a career to many.

dr_dba: this is also true, but it seems to be changing these days. Being a chef or learning hotel management as a course etc. is not looked down upon like before. In fact, these folks make decent living working as chefs in star hotels and enjoy lots of previliges.

Thanks to all for chipping in your thoughts on this topic.

Prashant said...

I believe that it is the responsibility of talented and intelligent students to dedicate themselves towards teaching at school and graduate level so that a firm,good quality foundation sets up for the forth-coming generations.Rather than unemployed tailers(result of improper guidance during their education) getting into the teaching line(due to lack of any other option),good students need to set their goal right now!!

Unknown said...

In my opinion, there are two areas which require immediate attention.

1. Quality & scope of the teacher:I don't blame the syllabus, but I blame the teacher who limits the thinking process of the student. A teacher should throw light on areas & motivate the student to explore. Is is what our teachers doing?

2. More emphasis on knowledge, less on skills and absolutely nil on Soft skills: Organizations say, we train them & give them the required knowledge. Do they have the necessary attitude to learn? Here, the student needs improvement.