For most older millennials and their parents, an engineering degree was the golden ticket. It guaranteed a job, a decent salary and even the opportunity to move abroad. So, by the mid-nineties, preparation for engineering and medical (that other traditional favourite) entrances became the way of life for Tamil Nadu school students, many beginning their coaching by Class 6 or 7, with lessons as early as 5am.
Cut to 2019 and there are much fewer takers for that golden ticket. So much that this year, close to 51 per cent of seats were left vacant at the end of the Tamil Nadu Engineering (TNEA) counselling. The problem? Not a lack of jobs, say industry experts. It’s simply a matter of uneven demand and supply -- there are way more seats available in Tamil Nadu today than students interested in pursuing engineering.
The figures tell the story. According to the TNEA, 1.33 lakh candidates registered for counselling in 2019. Out of them, 1,03,150 students were found eligible. But the number of engineering seats available in the state was 1.72 lakh.
So, as a faculty member of the premier Anna University (AU) points out, even before counselling began, there were already 69,000 seats in the state falling vacant.
“This figure speaks volumes of how huge the problem is,” the AU faculty member said.
How did it come to this?
Experts say that when the popularity of engineering courses was at its peak in Tamil Nadu, politicians, businessmen and other influential persons were keen for a piece of the pie. Many of them started their own engineering colleges. This year, 479 engineering colleges participated in counselling.
“Our state has almost twice the number of engineering colleges that we need,” says education consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi.
Anil D Sahasrabudhe, Chairman of the All India Council Technical Education (AICTE), which governs technical education in India, is among those concerned about the situation. The AICTE has decided against allowing the opening of any new engineering college in the country for the next two years.
“Seats in engineering colleges are not lying vacant because students have lost interest in the subject. The availability of seats over and above the demand is the root cause of the problem,” Sahasrabudhe has said.
However, there may also be a lack of interest among students, say experts. The quality of education at several engineering colleges is poor and these colleges cannot assure placements. With no guarantee of a decent job, parents and students have started looking to other fields.
The issue of quality can also be tied to the mindset that resulted in the mushrooming of engineering colleges. Several of these private colleges are operated with a short-sighted profit motive and are unwilling to pay enough to hire qualified teachers. As a result, students at such colleges end up with poorly trained teachers.
“Such teachers are not able to hone the skills of students and teach them properly. This affects the quality of graduates. These colleges also take little effort to teach new age technology skills to students as a result of which they are found unemployable,” says a computer engineering teacher at a private university.
K S Viswanathan, vice-president (Industry Initiatives) at the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), agrees. According to him, there are serious gaps between the requirements of the industry and the skills taught at engineering colleges.“The business models have changed nowadays and to meet the demand, students should have different skills, he says. “For example, every 18 months, an upgradation of technology takes place in the industry but the syllabus at colleges is revised only once in five or six years. So the students lack the skills desired by the industry,” he explains.
Meanwhile, with so many seats falling vacant, the colleges put the teachers under more pressure -- to recruit students.
“A majority of the private engineering colleges are asking their faculty to act as marketing people and bring students to join the college,” the computer science engineering teacher says.
The trend, however, may be self-correcting, if Sahasrabudhe is to be believed. According to him, on an average, at least 100 engineering colleges across the country are shutting every year. “The number of colleges closing on their own is much higher than the number of colleges shut down by AICTE as punitive action. These days students are only opting for good colleges, so only good colleges will survive,” he says.
But, those who run colleges believe the solution lies elsewhere. P Selvaraj, secretary of the Consortium of Self-Financing Profession, Arts and Science Colleges of Tamil Nadu, is of the view that the situation would improve if a separate technical university was set up by the state government.
“At present, private engineering colleges affiliated to AU are facing several problems,” he says. “Due to AU’s strict evaluation system, the pass percentage in a majority of colleges is very low. If a separate technical university came up, a lot of these issues would be resolved. The consortium has already given a proposal to the state government in this regard,” he says.
NASSCOM has taken a different route. It has started a programme named Future Skills with the aim of enhancing employability skills among engineering graduates. Under this programme, NASSCOM will collaborate with different engineering colleges and provide them guidance and recommendations to upgrade their curriculum with new skills and technology to meet market needs. “The initiative aims to bridge the gap between academia and industry,” says Viswanathan.
This story has a silver lining. Today’s students, unlike those before them, are now free from the engineering-medicine shackles and don’t have to fight their parents to pursue less traditional careers.
“The sole attraction of engineering courses was that they guaranteed employment. But even after spending lakhs of rupees on engineering education, if there is no certainty that my son will get a job, then it’s better I let him pursue his choice of course,” says V Selvam, whose son has enrolled in a visual communication course.
“There are so many new avenues and courses available now. Instead of spending four years in an engineering college and learning nothing, I preferred to study photography, which has better career prospects,” said Ananda S, a student.