S U N D A Y, N O V E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 9
Engineering Education Problems in India
I can broadly think of two kinds of problems dogging the broad mass of the engineering
education system in India. In this blog when I say 'broad mass', I exclude the premier
institutions (the IITs and IISc), not because they don't have problems but just that the
problems affecting them are different from those dogging the mass of non-premier
engineering colleges and institutions in India which produce the bulk of engineering
graduates in India.
This blog is only stating and articulating the problem as it relates to industry settings and
Research/Academia settings; analyses as to why the system is in this state of bad quality or
how to possibly get around this will be discussed subsequently.
Direct Employabilty
Direct employability is one much discussed quality problem -- it is said that only
approximately 25% of the graduates output by engineering institutions in India are directly
employable by companies in India. Presumably, a directly employable candidate (the 25%
category) will not need too much further training to start being productive for the company.
What happens to the other 75% students?
A recent study by a couple of IIT Bombay professors published the on-campus employment
placement percentages for a few colleges (a couple of NITs as well as a couple of private
engineering colleges) indicates that for those colleges, approximately 70% of the students
graduating got placed in jobs on campus. This number may not have included students who
pursued further studies or who got jobs off-campus and so on. There
is other anecdotal indication of placementpercentages. Its not clear if this 70% number can
strictly be considered an average ratio for all engineering colleges in India -- The nationwide
average may be lower than that number but again probably not too much lower, because the
number of people going to engineering colleges has only increased in India. (In recent years,
India has the highest rate of increase of engineering enrollments -- higher than China.)
So what happens to most Indian engineering graduates who are at different levels of
employability when they join jobs? They're trained -- Infosys, TCS etc. for example and even
the likes of L&T etc. all probably have well oiled training and induction programs -- the
candidates go through it and emerge productive. And these companies still run amazingly
profitable businesses. An interesting recent studymentions how quality problems of
engineering education are overcome by Indian companies - Anecdotally, some seasoned
industry professionals I have come across ascribe the significant rise of the Indian IT industry
(and now followed by other sectors like pharma and so on) not to the premier institutions but
to the army of engineering graduates from the scores of private engineering colleges that
were set up from the early nineties onwards.
So the bad engineering education quality forces companies to increase training investments
(they have to teach candidates what the engineering colleges should have been teaching)
which affects margins and salaries. At a broader strategic level though, it means these
companies do not expect a high capability set from engineering graduates from the mass of
engineering colleges in India, and either look for this capability set elsewhere, or simply don't
undertake too many projects or endeavors that require a high capability set.
Technical and Research Capability for Industry and Academia
One problem that gets discussed less often or is clubbed together with the direct
employability problem is pertaining to quality as it applies to prospective candidates for
Research and Academia related to technology and engineering. To meet the demands of a
growing economy (on which are pinned the hopes and aspirations of billions) India needs
high quality researchers and professors -- this is necessary (but not sufficient) for industry in
order to move up the technology value chain whereas for engineering colleges and
Universities this is really a grave necessity if they hope to increase quality. While it is
conceivable that a decent number of PhDs and researchers trained abroad may head back to
India and this may help alleviate the problem a little bit, there is absolutely no alternative for
the broad system but to improve the quality and capability of their graduates. The graduates
of today become the teachers and professors of tomorrow and poor quality can form a cycle.
Even a cursory look at statistics on post graduate engineering activity in India and
comparison to the likes of the US, Germany, China, Korea etc. indicates how badly off India
is relatively placed in this regard. There were more Indian-citizens getting engineering PhDs
in 1996 in the US (this number would have only increased in subsequent years) than there
were Indians getting PhDs last year in India! There are lots of well known private engineering
colleges who barely have a Masters program and who don't have a PhD program -- For eg, in
2005, China produced
"63,514 Masters and 9427 PhDs in engineering, exceeding corresponding US
numbers: 53,549 and 7,720, respectively. Indias graduation numbers were
unimpressive: 18,439 Masters and fewer than 1,000 PhDs in engineering. In
fact, India wasnt graduating enough PhDs to meet the growing staff
requirements of its universities."
The quality of Masters and PhDs output from institutions whose graduates have quality
problems is also likely to be suspect. This is because, unlike companies which can bear the
cost of teaching engineering graduates what engineering colleges should have taught them,
the engineering colleges cant train incoming Masters or PhD students or faculty members.
Despite the increasing number of engineers produced by India, from an overall engineering
college output capability and quality perspective, the US remains far ahead -- this is
obviously true at present.
This latter quality problem is much more grave (because it self-referentially affects the
education system itself) and its going to be much harder to fix because it is fundamentally
different from the direct employability problem -- What it takes to be a productive employee
in a company that has a running business is very different from what it takes to do original
research or to be a very good Professor. As quoted,
"Professor Arthur Bienenstock of Stanford University points out, a good university should have highquality post-graduate students who want to learn to perform research, an intellectual climate that
encourages scholarship, facilities in which teaching and research can be performed effectively,
adequate funding, and quality leadership. "
It is fair to say that most engineering colleges in India are pretty far from such a setting. This
problem needs a solution.
Hope
How the engineering education system came to where it is has been well studied and
documented although there's no simple solution. The context and 'environment variables' in
which great educational institutions were built say in the US in the last century was radically
different from the ones prevailing in India now -- so India will pretty much have to chart our
own waters. Naturally we will meander around a bit, make a few or more mistakes but we
will eventually get to improving things. A lot of recent reports suggesting steps that the Govt
is taking in order to increase the flexibility (while maintaining quality related conditions) of
institutions and universities to innovate, compete and establish (incl. ones from abroad)
themselves are highly encouraging!
While media indicates there is some apprehension about allowing non-Indian universities, I
think good Universities from the US, UK etc. must be invited with open arms to set up
establishments or partnerships in India -- There is a lot Indian engineering institutions can
learn from their experience. However I wouldn't bank too much on foreign Universities -Meeting the quality criteria at a cost model that will work in India and adjust to the Indian
milieu will stretch most Universities from abroad, even the ones with huge brand names. (See
also this article by Lloyd Armstrong, a USCLA Professor considered an authority on Higher
Education.) So finally it will be left to Indian players or Indian partners/collaborators to solve
the quality problems in the Indian education system. This may lead to several home-grown
adaptations in the field of higher education, analogous to the innovations (for eg the Rs. 10
prepaid recharge) Indian mobile operators pioneered when they had to launch mobile
services in India in the last decade.
The capacity of the broad mass of engineering education colleges/institutions can and will
need to rise to the challenge to address this problem -- This is needed even if the premier
institutions perform and execute their charter at a 100% efficiency. We already see attempts
and steps being undertaken in this direction by quite a few private universities and colleges.
Posted by Rakesh Barveat 12:09 AM