BENGALURU: Only 17 % of engineering graduates in Karnataka are getting employed, representing a staggering employability crisis, revealed a report submitted by the reforms committee on Karnataka Engineering Education Transformation.
The committee, set up by the higher education department and headed by Prof Sadagopan and other IIIT and IISc professors, made a detailed study on engineering education in Karnataka and suggested some major reforms. It submitted this detailed report to the higher education department recently.
The report mentioned some of the important reasons including mass unemployment among computer science graduates due to lack of employment opportunities, sharp decline in admissions to core or basic engineering branches (mechanical, civil and electrical), state engineering colleges that were once famous nationally and internationally seeing a decline in terms of quality, core branches ignoring cross domain reality and lack of competency among students, among other reasons.
Shortfall of professionals in aerospace, defence
Furthermore, it states that India’s semiconductor sector faces a projected talent deficit of 2.50 lakh to 3 lakh professionals by 2027. The state level gap is estimated at 10,000-15,000 professionals. Likewise, there is a shortfall of professionals in aerospace and defence -4,500 to 8,500, electric vehicles-6,000-11,000, clean energy - 5,000-9,000, biomedical devices- 2,200-4,200, etc and these gaps can never be filled by the Computer Science or IT graduates.
Recommends to form KEERA
The committee has suggested forming the Karnataka Engineering Education Reforms Authority (KEERA) which will include engineering data that serves as the backbone.
Minister for Higher Education, Dr MC Sudhakar, said, “A separate Act must be passed to form this Authority and we will start preparing for it soon. It will be through this Authority, various changes in the curriculum in engineering streams will be made phase wise.”
Further, it suggests the government as well as private universities to introduce CORE + AI Framework, which is three interlocking pillars. In Pillar 1, Mechanics first, AI Augmented curriculum: It includes governing equations and physical reasoning first and embedding AI/ML across all the eight semesters. In Pillar 2: Product focused, test to failure pedagogy: Every semester includes a 14 week design-build- test-fail-iterate cycle. In Pillar 3: Enrollment revival: differential tuition subsidies, industry driven grassroots STEM programmes, internship stipends, placement consortium guaranteeing 3+ interviews and a statewide ‘Built in Karnataka’ campaign.
The Committee also recommended limiting the student quota sanction at the beginning of any private university/private engineering college to 60 admissions for a particular course/department. Furthermore, an increase of 60 students per year will be allowed and limited to a maximum of 180 seats for the initial four-year period.
Private universities and private engineering colleges can increase the admissions by 60 per annum only if the course/department is accredited by the National Accreditation Board (NBA). Along with NBA accreditation, private universities should also obtain NAAC accreditation. In no case should the total student strength of the course/department exceed 300.
Private universities and engineering colleges cannot start more than five computer related courses/departments at any one time. The total student strength of all computer related departments should not exceed 900.
The same conditions are applicable to all courses/departments of Engineering/Technology programs. Existing private universities and private engineering colleges with more than 300 admissions in a particular course/department shall also have to obtain NBA recognition for the courses/departments within a period of two years from the date of publication of the said rules. Failure to do so will result in seats being cut as per the rules by the Higher Education Department.
These rules will also apply to the deemed to be universities across the state.