Engineering is a dream painter for the aspiring youth in the country. It is often this illusion that has led to many students to pursue this career path. But are the engineers in India happy about their career path? Are they able to pursue the dream they envisioned while joining their engineering colleges?
Only reason this doubt comes to mind is because many engineers are not able to pursue such dreams. May it be the work they do or maybe the salary they are earning, there is a big workforce that is still unhappy even though they are qualified engineers who have jobs.
Often humans fixate on the positive aspects of their thoughts and continue to pursue the same while being oblivious to other deterring factors that might hamper their progression. This is the same with engineers in India. A lot of engineers who do not take up jobs which do not fall into their area of interest or the job profile is primarily managing and testing, are often rendered jobless for many months in search of lucrative development job.
An article published by the Hindu highlighted that 95% of the engineering graduates in India are not skilled enough to be employed. As a career path, it is one of the most flourishing and reputed fields which enables you to create life changing innovations but are we pushing in the right direction? Are the means used still the correct approach towards moving forward?
Here the idea of re-skilling as come around among many engineers. The market has moved up in a very fast pace and the academic institutions have not been able to cope up with the same. In terms of producing engineers, its a simple equation of demand and supply. Engineering is a very lucrative career path as anything that is technologically made is handled by engineers or made by them. In simple words, every other sector is dependent on engineers for their smooth functioning.
So what is missing in the engineers presently?
The problem is not the number of engineers, its is the skills of the engineers.
Considering India, it is known for its humongous human resource and is considered one of the fastest developing nations. One of the primary reasons many MNCs are establishing offices in India is because of the abundance of labor force. Such a large army at their disposal is such a lucrative opportunity for companies to expand their businesses.
Even with such a large force, companies are becoming reluctant in hiring engineers or hire them on short term basis. There are several reasons for this:
- Outdated Coursework: The languages taught in the institutions are not in demand right now or many upgrades of the language has come out. This calls for graduates to learn the new languages or frameworks that are in demand right now.
- Less Practical Content: Companies are looking to hire candidates based on the skill-sets which includes their practical execution capabilities of the knowledge acquired. If the candidate is not practically competent in executing his business functions regardless of the theoretical knowledge he/she possesses , they are considered worthless for the company.
- Premier Institutes are few in comparison to total number of engineering colleges in India: Most of the premier institutes are the ones who generally have state of the art facilities and their number being a very compared compared to the engineering colleges in India.
What is the requirement of the market?
More Job Centric trained professionals! Considering the present market, it can be defined in one term: Dynamic. Technology is constantly evolving and the companies are always looking to figure out new ways to expand their businesses. This is where skilled engineers are required.
Strong analytical abilities and a practical logical thinking is one of the major aspects of a proficient engineer along with a plus point that an engineer can actually build what is going on in his/her head. This is one of the major reasons where engineers are fruitful in the core jobs.
Considering such an onus is bestowed upon them, companies are looking for professionals who have the right skill-set in order to be highly productive for the company. Companies presently are looking to invest lucrative amounts of money on any professional who is constantly updated with the latest technologies and has a high rate of efficiency in them.
Online portals to the rescue!
To cope up with such market demands, more versatile form of institutions have come up and are determined to guide engineers towards applying their skill-sets towards more job centric roles.
The case of study of online education portals correctly fits in here. In the last decade, the online education space has flourished in India. And most of the paid users in this segment are those looking to re-skill themselves. The industry is set to be worth nearly $2 billion (pdf) by 2021, up 10-fold from $247 million today.
Source: Online education in India: 2021, A study by KPMG in India and Google
So far, it appears to be working well, with even large software companies like Infosys, Wipro, Honeywell, and Tech Mahindra working with online education companies.Considering the problems we have highlighted with the academic institutions, certain players in the market have decided to introduce virtual homogeneous institutions that can impart relevant and job centric education without the barriers of a physical classroom.
Source: Quartz India.
With only the requirement of internet and a laptop, these portals have re-envisioned the methods of teaching and are only focused on imparting further relevant knowledge as per requirements of the industry. One of the major factors why online portals have become so popular presently is because of the dynamism they present in accordance to the industry. They are continuously updating their curriculum and modules as per the job opportunities and are focused on imparting the knowledge required to execute functions efficiently. The focus in Indian IT education has largely remained on legacy programming languages such as C, C++, Java, and Visual Basic, even though new-age languages like JavaScript, Golang, Python and Ruby are more prevalent now globally.
