Unemployment among Engineers in India:The Issue of Employability

Abstract

Although stupendous efforts have been made in the rapid growth of technical education institutions in India, yet mere quantitative expansion has raised several questions on the quality of education being provided by these institutes. Because the reckless expansion has generated the problem of unemployability among Indian engineers, the problem which is more serious than the problem of unemployment itself. Basically, employability of technical graduates may be defined as the consistency between technical education and the requirement of the industry. In other words, it is a person's capability of gaining initial employment, maintaining employment, and obtaining new employment if required. The National Employability Report by Aspiring Minds in 2012 stated that 83% of engineering graduates in India are unfit for employment. Similarly, NASSCOM study depicted that 75% of IT graduates to be unemployable. Thus, barring a few elite institutions majority of the technical institutes are producing graduates who are not employable. The employers are facing severe problems in finding the appropriate skilled and trained personnel for the rapid expanding IT industry and other sectors of the economy competing in the globalized regime. Therefore, it is imperative to place special emphasis on improving quality of education being provided by the ever-expanding institutions of technical education, especially, in the private sector. Only then the country will be able to produce engineers who will not only be employable within the nation but also globally competitive. The objective of the present study is to examine the extent of unemployment among Indian engineers and the reason behind their unemployability which is generally stated in terms of below par quality of technical education.