India’s 25 pct engineering graduates employable (Study)

Kolkata, Sept 19 : India produces a large number of engineering graduates every year, but multinationals find that just 25 per cent of them are employable, according to a study conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute on the emerging global labour market.
“Our engineering education, therefore, seems is not relevant to the present needs of the Indian industry. We need industry-specific / or sector-specific engineering education for making engineers employable,” said theEngineering Council of India (ECI).
The ECI organized its 6th national convention on the theme “Industry – Specific Engineering Education for Better Employability of Engineers-Contours of Reform” in Kolkata on Monday.
Higher technical education, particularly engineering education has always occupied a place of prominence in India’s economic development.
According to the XIth Plan Working Group of the Planning Commission on Technical Education, the key challenging issues include inter alia: assuring quality of technical education, ensuring its relevance to global, local market and industry needs, and improving employability.
Objective of the 6th National Convention was to consider in-depth various aspects of the reform of engineeringeducation and try to get a consensus on the contours of change.
It also considered aspects such as, the multidisciplinary engineering curricula and its new possible branchesthat will meet the needs of the industry.
The convention looked at duration of the course, industry training, after the course mandatory internship with the industry, treatment to the diploma stream in the reform process, and modalities of bringing in the engineer technicians in the process of formal engineering education.
The ECI said: “Concerns about the present engineering education system that we have today were widely shared by the delegates from both the industry and academia at these conventions.
“An almost unanimous view emerged from these in-depth deliberations that the engineering education needs a systematic overhaul, so that India can produce world-class engineers having multi-skills, apart from sound knowledge of engineering sciences.”
“We need industry/sector-specific engineering education. Besides, the country is able to educate much larger numbers without diluting academic standards. Indeed, this is essential because the transformation of our economy and society in the 21st century would depend, in significant part, inter alia, on the spread and the quality of technical education, particularly engineering education among our people.”