Six lakh information technology professionals are expected to lose their jobs over the next two three years, according to a forecast by a leading head hunter. Studies suggest that almost half of those who graduate from the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) take their skills to work in financial markets and consulting.
Has the great engineering dream died?
The answer, experts say, depends on what the 1.5 million engineers graduating every year dream of.
Conversations with students, faculty members and higher education experts suggest students don’t always sign up for engineering courses just to become engineers and to start designing new engines for cars, extending the lifetime of a battery, building the next big software giant or taking part in the “Digital India” programme. Most of them simply want a job – any job, and given a choice, a job with the government.
When the news of IT sector layoffs reached Rohtak, Dharampal Dahiya, 19, didn’t care. He has finished his second year in civil engineering and has been preparing for competitive examinations to get a government job. That is all he wants. And so do most of his classmates.
Dahiya travels 30 km everyday from his village Sisana in Sonepat to Matu Ram Institute of Engineering and Management, a private college in Rohtak. His father, a farmer, didn’t want him to follow in his footsteps, for agriculture is no longer a profitable occupation. His parents enrolled him in an engineering college, as friends and relatives suggested a BTech will ensure a “stable career”.
Sandeep Malik’s story is not very different. The 26-year-old from Rohtak finished his BTech in 2013 and became the first engineer in his family. “I couldn’t clear the National Defence Academy exam after Class 12. With my BTech background, I can possibly get a technical entry in the defence sector.” Like Dahiya, Malik took up engineering primarily to get a government job.
Their aspirations mirror that of India’s youth at large: the latest CSDS-KAS Youth Study, released in April 2017, found that 65% of Indian youth would prefer a government job; just 7% wished for a job in the private sector. The lure of a government job is obvious: job security, allowances and better pay at the entry level.
But how valuable is an engineering degree for a government job?
In retrospection, Malik says “not much”, as he explains the economics: “Engineering education costs around Rs 60,000 per year; a BA costs Rs 4,000-10,000. So you are spending four years, and around Rs 2.4 lakhs to get a BTech degree. BA is significantly cheaper and saves you a whole year, meaning additional time for preparation.”
Dahiya and Malik went to one of the thousands of private colleges that have sprung up in the country to fulfil the demand of engineering education. 3,288 engineering colleges exist under the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), more than double from the 1,511 colleges ten years ago.
On the other extreme, lie the IITs, the best that the country has to offer. But apart from the coveted civil services examinations, government jobs hardly figure on the list an IIT undergraduate.
Means to an end
1.5million
Engineers graduate every year in India as opposed to 95,000 in the United States 40%
