Psychosocial impact of the nationwide lockdown on undergraduate engineering students in Maharashtra

Abstract

Background: In the last few decades, mushrooming of technology institutes and engineering colleges has led to saturation of graduate engineers. For most technology and engineering graduates, the future seems gloomy and uncertain. With the recent worldwide recession, employability chances of many technology and engineering graduates have gone down. Survival of the most skilled is the thumb rule in recent years. The condition is further augmented by the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences of the lockdown. The graduates pursuing technology education and engineering are badly affected by this phase. Aim: The current study aims at assessing the impact of lockdown due to COVID-19 on the psychosocial behavior of the technology and engineering students. Study Design: This is an online survey. Study Population: Technology and Engineering students in the age group of 17-25 years, both males and females. Sample Size: The sample size was 779. Materials and Methods: A psychological impact scale for students was developed by the investigators (r = 0.85). It is a 5-point scale with 0 as minimum score and 120 as the maximum possible score. Results: The mean age of the students was 20.49 ± 1.45 years. Nearly 95.4% of the students were living with their parents during this period of lockdown. Approximately 34.79% of the students experienced borderline negative impact, 18.74 reported mild negative impact, and 4.24% reported moderate negative impact of lockdown in just 30 days of the lockdown period. Most surprisingly, despite being with parents, 23.1% of the students had been out on roads during the lockdown. Conclusion: The lockdown has shown its adverse impact on the technology and engineering students. There is an urgent need to take steps to improve the employability of technology and engineering students. Else such a skilled workforce will be victim of psychological problems and a very important asset of the country shall be a waste. © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.