PLIGHT OF ENGINEERING GRADUATES After watching the Tamil Short film “Naanum Engineer” by Vishnu Bharath and Team that was posted on Facebook yesterday, I realized the frustration among engineering graduates in Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu per se. Here is the link: https://youtube/watch?v=V8u8LEHKFjU The main theme of this short film is commercialization of education, substandard institutions, and poor standard of graduates passing out of these institutions. This frustration among the youngsters does not augur well. It should be an eye-opener to everyone. Who is to blame for this situation? Is it the government that granted licenses indiscriminately to whosoever wanted to open an engineering college (someone told me that there are 49 engineering colleges in Kumari District alone]; or the parents who want their children to become engineers (sometimes, due to their ego and sometimes due to their ignorance); or the fad of the students themselves to become engineers at any cost? In our place, the bad trend is that whenever people find out that there is some scope in a particular field, everyone flocks to that field and ultimately mars it. So is the case with engineering courses. Consequently, too many engineers produced by these colleges are in the job market. One should apply the simple and basic principle of economics here – demand and supply. When a commodity is too much in supply, its demand decreases, and it becomes too cheap. So, how to deal with the situation? 1. The parents should not force their children to choose a particular subject (it should be left to the choice of the students; if the students are not able to decide because they are too young to do so, then the parents can consult experts in the field of education and help them). 2. The students should not choose an engineering course just for the heck of it. They should think whether there will be demand for their subject when they complete their courses. It they are not able to make any decision in this regard, they should seek guidance from the experts. There are so many courses such as food technology, automobile engineering, psychology, environmental science, marine biology, aeronautical engineering, catering technology, textiles, tourism, journalism, health sciences so on and so forth. The students can choose a field in which there is limited competition. 3. As in the West, the schools can give counseling or guidance to the students in choosing the right subjects depending upon their field of interest and scope. (I don’t know whether there is any such facility in the schools in Tamil Nadu) 4. The current engineering graduates should equip themselves in a better way. In addition to their degrees, they should take short certificate or diploma courses relevant to their field that will put them in an advantageous position. The most important thing is that they should improve their communication skills in English. After interacting with some fresh engineering graduates, I have realized that their communication skill in English is too poor. (If someone asks me how to improve it, I can guide him from my personal experience, because I was a Tamil medium student at school) These graduates should understand that they are in a better position thanks to globalization (which enables migration of labor) than what was the case about three to four decades ago. Therefore, they need not get frustrated and be confident that they can get a job in some corner of the world, provided they hone their skills. In this context, I recall the following dialogue in the popular Amir Khan-starrer Hindi movie “Three Idiots” (it was produced in Tamil as Nanbargal or so) which revolves around an engineering college – “बेटा, क़ाबिल बनो क़ाबिल, कामयाबी तो साली झक मार के पीछे आएगी .. . (Be capable my son, success will follow you no matter what) Dear buddies, now-a-days, this is a burning problem in our society. Therefore, openly discuss it threadbare in FB in the interest of our younger generation – rather than wrangling over the merits of a particular movie or discussing whether chicken came first or egg, or locking horns over a political or religious issue. Good luck.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 17:26:17 +0000
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