India is a country full of people who aspire for greater heights, work hard and dream big. We Indians are known to be ambitious and for our work ethic worldwide. We have an affinity for education and we are expected to do exceedingly well at school and college. We basically give a lot of importance to education and degrees. While that is a good thing, we have not quite evolved as parents and society, when it comes to letting our kids choose the field in which they want to build a career. And in that process, we have and are continuing to let a generation down.
I am from a city in South India called Hyderabad, a city famous for its Biryani and Pearls. What it is also famous for, is being overly obsessed with sending students to IITs and NITs. Also, since not everyone – or rather most of them – do not make it to any of those two, there are about 700 colleges in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana alone to cater for the demand. 700 of about 5000 engineering colleges in the country, or in other words 1 out of every 7 colleges in India is located in these two states (formerly known as AP). So that’s the kind of demand engineering has in here, and it’s just a reflection of the state of affairs in the entire country.
So what is wrong with this? After all, it only means that there is a possibility for more students to get technical education, and aren’t there good employment opportunities for students graduating from these engineering colleges.
The answer is no and no. Most of the students aren’t either interested in engineering or are just simply not capable of surviving in the field. But since there are so many colleges with so many seats, and since most of them are unaware of the number of other career options out there they simply end up doing Engineering. Also, parents in Hyderabad and rest of the country are infatuated with IITians landing jobs with hefty packages. Parents believe, that getting into an IIT would ultimately mean that their son/daughter would also land such a package.
And if not an IIT, at least an engineering degree would guarantee a healthy paying job. Hence they push their kids into engineering, against their wishes, assuring them it’s for their own good. And to top it all, the branch the student opts for is based on the placement records, rather than what the student might be interested in. At the end of the day, money is what defines what your career would be. So if tomorrow, somehow the obsession with engineering fades off, and if we are made to believe that the Chartered Accountants make more money, we will start pushing our kids into pursuing CA.
To answer the second question – that is about the employment opportunities – let us look at some statistics. Out of all the engineer graduates in India, which is about 1.5 million, only 30% of them end up with a job. Most of those who end up with a job are paid much lower than what they deserve, considering the technical skills they possess, since there is an imbalance between the demand and supply. Also, a lot of them end up with a job in the IT sector, regardless of what course they pursued during Under-graduation.
Therefore, it’s quite clear that engineering being a lucrative and high paid profession is a myth. But we look at a few successful graduates and extrapolate their success to each and every one who gets into an engineering college. To top it all, we have corporate intermediate colleges such as Narayana & Chaitanya, who through their extensive advertising convince parents their kids will end up in an IIT or an NIT.
All these reasons mentioned above lead to a student becoming an engineer either against his will, or because he is convinced by the society and his parents alike that this is the only way out. So a student who could have been an economist, or a fashion designer, or a journalist, or any other thing he may have acumen for, ends up struggling really hard to get in to a decent engineering college. He then works through assignments, quizzes, internals & externals. And all that, for the possibility of having no future at all?
He does so because he believes that this is a tried and tested road towards success, cause we as a society made him believe so. We told him that at the end of the day, he will get a fat pay-check. He trusted us, and we let him down. We let a whole generation down.
Note: Image used in this post is only for representational purpose.
This post is a part of our awareness campaign #MyCareerMyChoice. To read more posts from this campaign, please click here.
