With several national surveys and studies (Nasscom-McKinsey 2005, Aspiring Minds 2016) concluding that over 75 percent of graduates of India’s 6,214 engineering colleges are unemployable in Indian and foreign multinationals, the Chennai-based Anna University (AU) — Tamil Nadu’s premier engineering and technology university — which has 550 colleges affiliated with it, is belatedly introducing major syllabus reforms from the new academic year 2017-2018 beginning August. 

Although the final draft of the revised syllabus is yet to be approved and will be finalised by the AU academic council after a new vice chancellor (former vice chancellor M. Rajaram’s tenure ended on May 26, 2016) takes charge, some overdue reforms proposed by the AU syllabus sub-committee include compulsory industry internship and case-based studies; revamped evaluation system to give greater weightage to practical lab work, and introducing a choice-based credit system to allow students in affiliated colleges a wider choice of electives.

The syllabus committee’s greater practical education recommendation is being widely welcomed by educationists, faculty, students and college managements since practical training for undergrad engineering students is currently limited to submitting a project and undertaking an industrial visit in the final year of the four-year bachelor’s degree programme. Excepting a few dozen top-ranked engineering colleges, the majority of Tamil Nadu’s 550 engineering institutions certify graduates deficient in basic conceptual and application skills, and fail to attract respectable corporates for campus recruitment. The obsolete AU syllabus prompted the 349-member Consortium of Self-financing Professional and Arts and Science Colleges of Tamil Nadu, to recently demand sufficient autonomy to formulate 20 percent of the syllabus to enable them to customise it to the needs of local industry and introduce usage of new digital technologies. 

“Although industrial training has been made mandatory in the revised syllabus, past experience shows that most companies are unwilling to provide training to students studying in remote, unfamiliar engineering colleges,” says Prof. A. Kanagaraj, chairperson of the Chennai-based Jaya Group of 12 Institutions, including four engineering colleges. 

The widening gap between the skill-sets of fresh engineering graduates and skills required by industry was highlighted again in the fourth edition of the National Employability Report 2015-16 of the Delhi-based Aspiring Minds Assessment Pvt. Ltd, an employability evaluation and certification company. According to the report, 80 percent of the 1.5 million engineers churned out by India’s 6,214 engineering and technology institutions every year are unemployable in IT companies. The report placed states in four 25 percentile bins in decreasing order of employability. Surprisingly Bihar, Delhi, Kerala and Odisha colleges are placed in the top 25 percentile bin with Tamil Nadu in the fourth together with Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh. However, the study admits that states with the largest number of colleges are likely to show low employability percentages.

Obliged to follow the obsolete AU syllabus and hobbled by sub-standard faculty, Tamil Nadu’s engineering colleges are increasingly being faulted for the steady decline of the state’s once renowned engineering companies. Therefore, AU’s syllabus overhaul initiative is a timely step in the right direction. “Making hands-on industrial training mandatory is a welcome initiative but it should not be left only to students or the university to find internship opportunities. Corporate managements also need to actively cooperate with engineering and technology institutions to provide short-term jobs and internship opportunities, and also depute adjunct faculty to colleges for industry-oriented training. Ultimately, industry has the most to gain,” says Chennai-based Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and head of education at KPMG India, the well-known consultancy firm.

Nor does it reflect well on the captains and leaders of Tamil Nadu Inc that it’s taken them so long to grasp this elementary proposition.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)