Engineering Education 2018 – Trends
The third round of Tamil Nadu state wide counselling in the engineering stream has been concluded and a detailed analysis is available. It makes for a very worrying picture and a situation that desperately needs to be examined and addressed on a war footing.
Here are some of the available insights:
- 214 Engineering colleges have each filled less than 10 seats.
- 71 colleges couldn’t even fill even a single seat.
- Civil and Mechanical Engineering, once the hot streams, have been demoted to the least preferred streams among the core branches.
- Computer Science engineering is now the most preferred of all the streams, polarising resources to it.
- Many colleges made a critical error a few years ago: the surrendered the Information technology branch. By surrendering the Information Technology branch they increased their intake in Mechanical Engineering and, now that Mechanical has become one of the least preferred branches, they are deeply regretting it.
- Surprisingly, like last year, the Chemical Engineering branch is getting filled up in many colleges.
- Only 30 self-financing colleges have filled more 50% of the seats till the end of 3rd round counselling.
- Preference for Tamil medium Mechanical and Civil has come down drastically.
- Preference for Biotechnology and Biomedical is good and maintains the level of the previous years.
- Secondary branches like Automobile and Production were also least preferred, even in the top self-financing colleges.
- Only 47 self-financing colleges filled more 30% of the seats, at the end of 3rd round counselling.
- All the Government and university department colleges have filled more 40 % of their seats at the end of 3rd round counselling.
- At the trend it is moving, only about 72,000 seats will be filled at the end of 5th round. This will amount to the lowest numbers when compared to the last few years.
- Anna University and all the affiliated colleges have to rethink the entire structure and make sure that they invest in future technologies and plan their syllabus according to the needs of Indian industry.
- Its high time industries should start involving themselves in a much bigger and meaningful way with the institutions so that they will in the near future be able to source quality candidates with the necessary skills.
Once again I reiterate that this is a strong wake-up call for both the institutions and the engineering recruiters. The response needs to be on triple fronts: a ‘pull’ mechanism that ushers properly whetted students to appropriate streams, a build mechanism that is getting institutions and faculty to do justice to them, and a ‘push’ mechanism that directs the students to rewarding career destinations so that this in itself becomes a viable attraction to the next generation of students. Academic Organisations need to invest more on faculty than on Buildings. Talent Engagement will be the millennial mantra. At this point of time, not a day can be lost. The 2018 year is bleeding from this imbalance and if addressed on a state and national emergency basis, we may be able to begin to see a good change by 2021.
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