Tamil Nadu Skills shortage paradox Every year India’s 1,300-plus engineering colleges churn out an estimated 500,000 engineering graduates to feed the manpower needs of the booming IT-ITES (information technology and information technology enabled services) industry (annual revenue: $36 billion or Rs.162,000 crore). Yet, paradoxically the IT-ITES industry is suffering a severe shortage of manpower because only 7-8 percent of the annual output of engineering graduates is employable. The looming employability crisis confronting engineering graduates across the country has been the focus of studies conducted this year by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM); an expert team of the Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE — an autonomous society under the department of scientific and industrial research, headed by distinguished scientist Dr. K. Kasturirangan) and CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) Tamil Nadu chapter. These studies highlight serious shortcomings in India’s human resource development effort. The conclusions of the studies are of particular significance to Tamil Nadu (pop: 62.1 million) where 225 engineering colleges and 13 deemed universities provide technical education to an estimated 1.5 million students. According to Mapping of Manpower Skills for Tamil Nadu — 2015, a report released by CII-Tamil Nadu in March, 43 percent of graduate engineers and 47 percent of diploma holders in the state are finding it difficult to find suitably remunerated employment even two years after completion of their study programmes. The study says that although Tamil Nadu produces 80,000 engineers and 60,000 diploma holders annually in addition to a large number of Industrial Training Institute (ITI) graduates, and has emerged as the largest producer of technical manpower in the country, high levels of unemployment prevail in its engineering talent pool. Even among those who found jobs within two years, at least 50 percent had to wait for nearly a year and 40 percent for close to two years before offers fructified. The authors of the study cite three reasons for this dismal state of affairs: lack of an integrated education system which monitors the education quality from school to postgraduate level; varying standards across educational insti-tutions, and failure to continuously update college curriculums to industry expectations. “Established institutions such as IITs, NITs, and others continue to deliver their brand promise. However, several hundred new engineering colleges which have sprung up in the past decade have difficulty in attracting adequately qualified faculty, retaining them, and enhancing their skills. Many of them therefore don’t attract the best students. It is the growing number of students graduating from these non-academic, poorly managed colleges who experience unemployment. Fresh engineering graduates also require additional training in soft and behavioural skills, therefore there’s a growing need for ‘finishing schools’ that provide such inputs,” says R. Chandrasekaran, managing director, Cognizant Technology Solutions (annual sales: Rs.3,600 crore), one of the largest recruiters of engineering graduates in India. But while academicians agree that the quality of education imparted in second and third rung engineering colleges leaves a lot to be desired, they argue that it is unfair of IT companies to expect fresh…
