Placement Dilemma in Engineering Institutions in India

The admission process to engineering courses has come to an end for this year and many colleges have gone with more than 50% of the seats unfilled. Financially, low admission has cascading effect for the next four years. Many colleges are in a tight spot and may face closure if the trend continues. The root cause of this problem is excess capacity created for engineering education in some states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and may be Maharashtra as well. At the macro level, excess capacity has consequent financial loss to the investor. Its effect at micro level is more damaging to the nation as well as to the profession of Engineers.

When supply far exceeds demand, every demand gets fully met. That is what has happened in the recent years as far as engineering admission goes.

Everyone who satisfied the minimum qualification criteria of 45% in PUC/12^th class and wanted an engineering seat got it in one college or the other. When the supply is plenty, the aspirant has an option of pick and choose the college where he or she would like to pursue the studies. The parents of these aspirants visit colleges of their choice and enquire mainly about two issues; firstly about the fees to be paid and more importantly about the placement record of the college. Placement performance is not the right yardstick to gauge a college because placement is really the reflection of an individual’s caliber. Today, colleges are considered to be placement consultants rather than temples of learning and knowledge. This situation is probably created by some engineering college themselves in the pursuit of marketing their own colleges. The question of marketing arises due to excess capacity. So today, many colleges are concentrating on marketing more through publicity and social media etc than building quality in knowledge imparted.

Quality of End-product.

Placement performance of engineering colleges is a reflection of the quality of the passing out students as well as the standard of training imparted by the colleges. Both these are adversely affected in a scenario of plenty. This needs a detailed look. If we see the standard of students admitted to an average engineering college, we will find that a majority of them are border-line cases, who qualified due to lowered entry criteria as also due to affordable fee structure imposed by the Govt. Many of them have no aptitude for serious study and accept admission due to parental pressure and easy availability. It is no coincidence that about 40% of those joining engineering do not complete the four year study.

Secondly, the plenty phenomenon has also affected the standard of training. More and more colleges mean more and more demand for qualified faculty. Though, AICTE, New Delhi has made M.Tech as the minimum eligible qualification for a teaching faculty, colleges find it hard to get qualified staff with experience. So they settle for freshers who are the product of the same mediocre system. The net outcome of such a skewed system is that we produce mediocre engineers.

Clamor for Excellence.

In the 50’s and 60’s, there were no placement offices in engineering colleges. Passing out engineers were certain to get employed in many PSUs and private companies. The norm those days was that one should be a first class graduate to be employed. The education standards in those days were so good that education meant acquiring knowledge and not merely qualifying in examinations. Mass production of engineers in the recent decades has adversely impacted the quality of engineers for the reasons stated above. With the quality of Indian education system going worse, employers have tightened the acceptance criterion to 60% or more in Matric, PUC and graduation.

Today, campus interview is possible only for the students who have performed consistently well at 70% or more in Matric, PUC and Engineering. Employers are looking for excellence whereas the engineers are moulded out of mediocre stock. So, many prospective employers avoid average colleges and try to select their requirement from colleges with some reputation. Even if some recruiter is willing to conduct a campus selection process, many students become ineligible because of their performance in Matric and PUC. Colleges located in the interior districts of a state are handicapped further by virtue of their location. The CET seat allocation process has in built bias towards certain colleges by allotting the creme of the applicants to them at the cost of many average colleges.

The lopsided education system has only created a vast army of educated but unemployable graduates. Vast majority of villages in India today have graduates, some of them being unemployed. Today’s youth have degrees but lack knowledge. In this overall confusion of an education system, colleges are made responsible for the employment of their students. Is this at all reasonable?

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This article has been written by Col (Retd) NPR Babu, Dir (Academics) of SCT Institute of Technology .The institute is one of the good engineering colleges in Bangalore.