Why Most Indian Engineering Degrees Are of Little Value
Photo courtesy IIT Bombay
By Ashok K Nag*
There exists a widespread global perception, particularly within the media, that Indian engineers are among the finest in the world. This notion is often reinforced by repetition and not based on reality. A simple Google search for "Indians are the best engineers in the world," yields a staggering 177 million results. However, this perception is inherently distorted, as it predominantly stems from the career and financial success of a miniscule fraction of graduates from the top engineering institutes and colleges.
The Government of India, through the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), ranks the top 50 engineering colleges. A majority of them are government-run and subsidized: 17 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and 11 National Institutes of Technology (NITs).
However, this elite group represents only a fraction of the engineers who graduate each year in India. Also, not one of the top 50 engineering colleges in India is among the 100 best in the World.
A more nuanced perspective emerges when considering global rankings. For instance, US News publishes a Global List of the 1000 best educational institutes across various fields. In the realm of engineering, only 42 Indian institutes secured a spot on this list for the 2022-23 period, in stark contrast to 193 institutes from China. Moreover, the highest-ranking Indian institute holds a position of 145 on this list, whereas 5 of the top 10 ranked engineering institutes are from China.
These realities underscore the importance of acknowledging the diversity within the Indian engineering landscape and recognizing that while there are certainly exceptional talents emerging from prestigious institutions, they represent only a fraction of the broader engineering workforce in India.
In May 2022, Sudha Murty, the chairperson of Infosys Foundation, lamented that 85% of engineering graduates are not immediately employable. Murty was addressing the graduating students of KLE Technological University in Hubballi, Karnataka This view, that most Indian engineering graduates are of low quality, is held by companies hiring such graduates in India and elsewhere.
Each year, India produces around 1.5 million engineers. At the top end, are the low-cost government subsidized IITs, which in 2023 admitted 17,400 students for their undergraduate programs.
The Indian media extensively cover the success of IIT engineers, mainly in the United States, especially focusing on their wealth. This is because the engineers include billionaires and chief executives of major global technology corporations. Vinod Khosla, an IIT Delhi graduate, who runs Khosla Ventures, has an estimated net worth of $7 billion, according to Forbes. Other success stories of IIIT engineers are : Romesh T. Wadhwani, from IIT Bombay, founder of Symphony Technology Group, with an estimated net worth of $5 billion; Sundar Pichai, IIT Kharagpur, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, reported to have a net worth of $1.7 billion. and Arvind Krishna, IIT Kanpur, CEO of IBM.
A Google search for “Sundar Pichai net worth” brings up nearly 400,000 results, while a similar search for Krishna brings up more than 1.5 million results. This is an indication of the wide Indian media coverage of the financial success of IIT graduates in the U.S.
Apart from the IITs, NITs and a handful of top universities, there are several engineering schools approved by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), which are accredited by the Government of India. About 220,000 engineering undergraduates are admitted annually by these accredited institutes.
Each year, nearly 85% of India’s 1.5 million engineers graduate from private institutions which are not accredited, with many of them being run for profit. The quality of education at most of these institutions is subpar. Not surprising then that typically their graduates are hired for low-wage, repetitive roles such as maintenance or data entry and not for engineering jobs.
IIT Kanpur Library. Courtesy IIT Kanpur
The poor quality of most engineers in India has been known for a while. In 2009, for instance, a World Bank sponsored survey found that "64% of employers expressed only partial satisfaction or were dissatisfied with the quality of engineering graduates." The study also found that Indian engineering graduates demonstrated greater proficiency in lower-order thinking skills, compared to higher-order thinking skills such as "Identifying, formulating, and solving technical/engineering problems."
In fact, most engineering students themselves realize that their education is of low value. In 2009-2010, for instance, a survey gathered data from 1,178 undergraduate engineering students in Delhi, India. The findings revealed that the teaching methodology predominantly relied on theoretical classroom lectures, with limited exposure to hands-on technical and laboratory work. Also, half the students did not have the opportunity to participate in practical use of their skillsets. Government-run institutions were found to offer students greater chances to engage in practical work compared to private colleges.
In 2020, a study surveyed about 7,000 students enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs across 48 public and private institutions in four Indian states. More than half the students said that their knowledge, skills, and abilities had significantly improved during their studies. However, only a third of students considered the quality of education they received to be above average, when including the number of those who did not respond or expressed uncertainty.
The data from the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), sponsored by the Indian government's Education Department, provide valuable insights into the quality of education offered by private colleges and universities. GATE results carry considerable weight in terms of employment opportunities since several Government-run public sector entities, spanning industries such as steel, nuclear, power, and mining, annually hire thousands of engineers based on their GATE scores. Furthermore, GATE scores play a pivotal role in securing fellowships offered annually by various government defence, space research, and other scientific and technical organizations.
In 2023, only 515,000 engineers registered for the GATE examination. This statistic suggests that only a third of graduating students possess the confidence in their engineering skills to undertake the GATE examination.
The future appears worse for a significant portion of Indian engineering graduates. The rapid expansion of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools will likely obsolete many of the low-skilled programming roles. In 2019, The Aspiring Mind (now SHL), a company specializing in job skills credentialing, conducted a survey of 170,000 graduates from 750 colleges across India. Shockingly, the study revealed that only 3% of engineers possessed the necessary skills for AI-related jobs.
Even after they graduate and find jobs at major companies in India, many engineers have problems upgrading their skills. There is often a lack of encouragement for continuous skill improvement and "learning by doing."
During a train journey from Pune to Mumbai, I had a conversation with two engineers: one from Japan and the other from India. The Japanese engineer was visiting India to address a bottleneck in the operation of a Japanese machine in operation at an Indian company.
The Indian engineer expressed frustration, lamenting that despite being highly qualified, he was assigned various tasks, while his Japanese counterpart focused exclusively on tackling problems with the machine that required attention. As a result, the Japanese engineer had become a specialist whereas the Indian engineer felt he was merely a "jack of all trades." This anecdote highlights a broader issue within the Indian engineering landscape, where specialization and focused expertise often take a back seat to more generalized skill sets.
I mentioned to the Indian engineer that there is a potential solution. High quality courses on a wide range of engineering and related courses are available online, many with video instructions and at a relatively low cost. Engineering students and graduates in India should make use of these resources to improve their skills and job prospects.
*Ashok Kumar Nag is a Mumbai based consultant in information management and data analysis. He spent over 25 years in the Statistics and Information Management department of the Reserve Bank of India, retiring as an adviser. Ashok is an alumnus of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India.
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