Socio-Economic Review in Gujarat: Technical education stares at bleak future as fewer students opt for it

According to the report, the total number of students in 2015-16 in all the technological institutes, including government-run and self-financed, was 2,16,061 which came down to 1,86,524 in 2016-17.

The number of girl students in the technical colleges also decreased — from 42,937 in 2015-16 to 30,009 in 2016-17— indicating that girls are taking up engineering and other technical courses.

Former vice-chancellor of Gujarat University, M N Patel, who is currently working as an advisor to Vadodara-based Parul University, said there were a number of reasons for the poor state of technical education in the state. One of the reasons, he said, was the mushrooming of self-financed institutes (SFIs) that are not properly equipped to teach engineering and pharmacy to the students. Except 16 government and two grant-in-aid engineering colleges, the rest of the technical colleges are in private hands in the state. According to him, 90 per cent of engineering and pharmacy seats are in private colleges only.

Patel, who also worked as principal of the L D Engineering College and headed admission committee for professional courses (ACPC), said that students passing out of the most of the private colleges were not properly qualified and hence, they did not get good-paying jobs.

Another reason, he said, was the supply of students becoming more than the demand in the job market. “Most of the engineers with BTech and MTech degrees are being offered a monthly package of Rs 10,000 to 12,000 only despite the fact that they have spent lakhs of rupees to complete their education,” said Patel.

He said that employers were offering low pay because there is a huge unemployment among engineers.
Patel, who is also on the panel of experts with the UPSC, said that the job creation was not taking place in the country for quite some time and this was resulting in huge unemployment among engineers and other technical-educated people.

According to the survey, there are a total of 1,7038 engineering graduates registered with employment exchanges in the state seeking jobs. Of them, 5,133 are mechanical engineers, 4,535 electrical engineers, 2,110 civil engineers and over 5,000 are from other branches.

There are 468 engineers with MTech degrees registered as jobless in employment exchanges.