India – Employability – A disconnect between what the industry needs and what the students learn

Puneet Mishra, director of Ambition Institute of Technology in Varanasi, is a worried man. He is concerned that a majority of engineering graduates in India are not employable. There is a disconnect between what the industry needs and what the students learn, he said, as the curricula are not upgraded frequently enough to match the industry requirements.

The issue of employability of engineering graduates has time and again been raised by academicians and corporate leaders. A recent survey conducted by PurpleLeap, a joint venture between Pearson and Educomp, says only 12 per cent of the surveyed undergraduates were employment ready. While 52 per cent of the students were trainable, 36 per cent were untrainable. The survey was conducted among 34,000 final-year students with more than 60 per cent marks across 198 engineering colleges in 13 states.

Interestingly, contrary to the common notion that communication skills are the biggest challenge for engineering graduates in India, the survey found out that analytical ability, a subset of generic ability which measures logical and analytical reasoning, was the main problem. Take the case of Prachika Modi, 24, an engineering graduate from AVIT College, Chennai. She took an employability test after college and found that she lacked in certain skill sets mandatory for getting a job in a decent company. “If you have problems with communication skills, it would be okay with some companies. But problem solving skills are a must without which you have no way of getting a job,” she said. Modi worked hard to improve these skills and has got a job in an IT company.

“During the last 20 years engineering colleges have mushroomed across the country and have failed to attract talented faculty. As a result they are unable to impart quality education, which affects the performance of the students when it comes to employability,” said Amit Bansal, CEO, PurpleLeap.

According to the survey, students from IITs and other top-notch institutions had no such problems. “It is the increasing number of students coming out of the neo and non-academic managed colleges that contribute to non-employability or under-employability,” said Shankar Srinivasan, chief people officer at the IT services giant Cognizant…

via The Week | Hire secondary.

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India | ‘Only 17% techies employable’ | The Asian Age

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India – Skills Gap – Public Private Partnership : The National Skill Development Corporation

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