Why Tamil Nadu has 45,000 engineering seats empty

The existence of a large number of engineering colleges is one of the major reasons why the IT industry chooses Tamil Nadu as a preferred destination. The colleges churn out the required manpower in hordes, which the industry laps up for its own growth and expansion. But this year, engineering institutions have faced a major shock. A whopping 45,000 seats out of the 149,000 available seats have fallen vacant in the 2011 admissions to the 577 engineering colleges in the state.

To explain this situation, Anna University Vice-Chancellor P. Mannar Jawahar cites the increasing trend of IT companies going to arts and science colleges for campus hiring. At the same time, education activists are demanding an embargo on the setting up of new engineering colleges by AICTE and the implementation of measures to regulate college fees, plus improve infrastructure, quality and manpower in the engineering education sector.

“IT companies have tasted success by hiring brilliant BSc and MSc IT, maths, physics and chemistry graduates delivering goods at par with BE. A typical BE fresher expects a salary of Rs. 25,000 against the more modest expectations of BSc and MSc pass-outs who settle for a salary of Rs. 15,000,” says Jawahar. Anna is the nodal university of the Tamil Nadu government that conducts entrance exams for the 577 affiliate colleges coming under its umbrella.

Till last year, engineering education was considered to be the only passport to land jobs in IT. Despite the cost of technical education, the salary levels made many middle class and lower middle families educate their children in engineering colleges that got them a high-paying IT job.

“IT industry looks at engineers for their math proficiency, a much-needed skill in analysing problems and conceiving algorithms to solve various IT automation projects. By virtue of their discipline, engineers are sought after for technical grasping ability which cannot be expected of arts and science graduates,” says R Chandrasekaran, president and managing director of Cognizant Technology.

But Deepali Singh, business head of firstnaukri.com (a subsidiary of the job portal naukri.com) says that margin pressures due to a global slowdown have made IT companies look at cost-cutting even for talent, by substituting engineering candidates with MSc and BSc. “There are many companies that are running pilot tests on giving functional roles to BSc and MSc pass-outs. The industry continues to hire 95% engineers but is gradually re-assigning the various support roles to non-engineering workers.”

The intake of non-engineering candidates would impact the hiring prospects of engineering stream students only marginally, opines E Balaji, CEO of Mafoi Consultant. “An engineer would be reluctant to work on many of the job functionalities which an ordinary graduate could unabashedly perform. Scheduling a client call, monitoring the project progress, arranging intra-level team communication are some of the mundane tasks that a trained graduate with limited exposure to IT could handle.” Basic software testing is one domain where IT companies could manage the show with non-engineers.

Source: The Financial Express, September 2, 2011