A majority of students who graduate from technical institutions and engineering colleges are not “employable”, if a new survey by ‘Aspiring Minds’ is any indication.
Employability with regard to IT product companies is as low as 4.22 per cent (among computer/electronics related branches), while employability with regard to IT services companies is 17.84 per cent (wherein the company gives 3-6 months of in-house training) which is much lower than the “advertised” figure of 25 per cent, states the survey.
The survey was based on the results of a standardised computer-based test called Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test or AMCAT — conducted for more than 40,000 engineering and MCA students (in final year) in over 12 states.
To be at the forefront of innovation and achieve higher growth, the survey suggests that it is necessary that higher-order work with regard to product development and research grows in India apart from the services industry. To facilitate the same, the product engineering employability needs to be improved from the current figure of 4.22 per cent. This requires greater focus on part of institutions of higher education to impart quality education in Computer Science and Programming.
KPOs, suggests the survey, will find only 9.47 per cent technical graduates employable. Employability with regard to business process outsourcing units (BPOs) and Technical Support Jobs (TSJs) is 38.23 per cent and 25.88 per cent, respectively. This leaves a total of 61.77 per cent students who require training in both soft-skills and problem-solving skills to be eligible for any job in the IT or ITeS sector.
“We investigated how many candidates will be employable at IT services companies if they do not run 3-6 months in-house training and rather, put candidates directly on projects. This is a long term need of the industry and required for India to maintain its global edge in the IT services space. The figure can be optimistically estimated to 5.97 per cent. This is a concerning figure. For India to maintain its competitive advantage, the educational institutions need to produce industry-ready candidates. This requires substantial intervention on part of higher education institutions to impart IT skills to students,” states the survey.
It also notes that given that the ratio of the number of top 100 campuses to the rest is more than 10 times, more than 70 per cent (says it’s a conservative estimate) employable students in IT product sector are in so-called tier 2 campuses, whereas more than 80 per cent employable students for the IT services/KPO sector are in tier 2 campuses. IT product and KPO companies typically do not source from tier 2 campuses, which creates a large artificial dip in supply of eligible candidates, adds the survey.
At the same time, it is three times harder (in cost and effort) to identify an employable graduate from a tier 2 campus as compared to a tier 1 campus for a product company and twice as hard for IT services companies and KPOs. From an economic perspective, this makes it unattractive and inefficient for companies to hire students other than those from tier 1 campuses. This is the reason why companies use the campus name as a proxy to decide whether to give candidates an interview chance or not. Innovative models and government support is required to help bridge this huge gap hampering equal job opportunity and requisite manpower supply.
