According to the Annual Employability Survey 2019 report by Aspiring Minds, the employability prospects of Indian engineering has not changed in the past nine years. Only a handful of engineers possess the next-generation skills which can be used properly in an organization. The report also says that 94% of Indian engineers are not fit for hiring and that only 2.5% of them have technical skills in AI that can be used in the industry to maximize its growth and profitability. It also highlights that if any ad hoc changes are made in the Indian higher education system, it won’t be able to address and solve the problem of unemployed engineers in India. The solution is that it needs a very systematic and fundamental change so that high unemployability numbers can be dealt with. Such a situation can cause major instability in the economic and social conditions of our country. In the upcoming years, it might also lead to wide-scale dissatisfaction and disillusionment. Even though the number of educational institutions, universities, and colleges is increasing, the problem still persists. The wide employability gap and why Indian Engineers are jobless is also due to rote based learning rather than actually coding the programs on the computer for various kinds of problems. Additionally, there is a dearth of good teachers who can teach programming because most of the good programmers get a job in the IT industry with a good salary.

Some possible reasons for the longevity of why Indian engineers are jobless could be parental pressure, poor or outdated curriculum, and expectations.

Parental Pressure: This is one of the major reasons why students are forced to opt for subjects that they do not want to study or a course that they don’t want to pursue. Parents usually consider engineering and medicine as the only stream where they can see their child’s growth and prosperity in their career. This forces the student to get just the qualifying marks by beautifying some questions and attending the examinations. This ends up in scoring a good percentage but less acquisition of knowledge. It is really important that parents improve their views and opinions regarding their child/children’s career options or choices which will give them a wide scope of choosing what they want to study rather than forcing them.

Poor or Outdated Curriculum: A significant number of students in India opt for CS/IT while they pursue engineering since the IT Industry is growing. If we take a look at the syllabus of the courses that are taught in colleges and universities, it is evident that the syllabus is laidback and ancient in any engineering university. With new, high end and highly demanded requirements in the industry like React(JavaScript library), Swift and AngularJS, and million others including machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence, students are still being taught C (programming language), C++ (programming language). Apart from the outdated and laidback syllabus, a huge gap has been bridged between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge which puts more emphasis on the real-life use of theoretical knowledge which leads to unemployed engineers in India. This problem can be curbed by changing the autonomous system and developing something new and more practical in nature. As an ensue of which, millions of students in line will be benefitted and will have a window to reach out to the new learning which can be useful in the industry in the future. Rather than 100% examination based judgment, students can be evaluated based on the practical implementation of the knowledge via mini-projects, presentation skills, and ability to relate the problem with the industry.

Expectations: The sole basis of hiring graduates from an engineering college in the IT industry has been their performance in 10th, 12th, and B.Tech. There are a few programming languages that every fresher must learn before applying. This means that the students need to have complete command over the languages which will be used in the expertise rather than other skill sets.

There exist no shortcuts in improving the current scenario. However, immediate identification and quantification of the gap are important along with short-term vocational band-aid, and intervention in the education structure can serve to improve the gap.

 Vocational courses can help in filling the gap and reducing the employability gap in India. After a rapid recognition and proper identification of the gap, an individual can opt for vocational courses to shorten the employability gap or eliminate the same. This will help in enhancing the required niche skills which will be required to incorporate those that typically look for a certain Skill Set. It is high time that the Indian engineers move beyond the basic programming and coding skills and be equipped with the changing requirements and trends in the sector in order to keep up with the high demands of the industry in a high paced technological world and challenge the big question Why Indian Engineers are jobless.