Something is rotten in the field of engineering education. Even if India could pride itself of having its people in the core of top global companies like Apple, most of the fresh engineering graduates have been going without jobs for some years. The problem has become so acute that desperate graduates are falling prey to the machination of racketeers, who promise jobs after soft-skill training in lieu of a huge fee. Imagine someone collecting `5,000 from each of the 400 freshers, who fell for his glib talk on employment in the IT industry, and then taking them for a solid ride.
Besides, the number of engineering graduates now registered with the employment exchanges and waiting for a job has gone up throughout the country — in some states it is as high as a few lakhs — in the recent years after colleges proliferated mainly in south India.The clear indication is that most of the colleges that mushroomed after engineering education was opened to the private sector in a big way are not churning out graduates who are employable. One main reason is that they lack in necessary infrastructure and proper faculty. In fact, as it was revealed recently through a case of suicide, some colleges consider corporal punishment as an appropriate and acceptable way of chastising engineering students.
So it is not surprising that students have started shunning such colleges that are ranked low. In Tamil Nadu more than one lakh seats are expected to remain vacant after counselling. This makes one wonder how engineering education could be pulled out of the abyss. One immediate thing that the All India Council for Technical Education and other authorities should do is to crack down on colleges to ensure that prescribed norms are adhered to. Then, to place a moratorium on permission for new colleges and increasing the number of seats in existing insitutions.