The Hindu Business Line : Engineering grads urged to acquire additional skills

Most of the engineering colleges have become commercial. The craze for computer science and IT-related fields has pushed pure science courses to the back seat. Further, with campus interviews on the rise even mediocre students get selected by companies and, hence, most of the colleges don’t train their students in personality development.

Krithivasan, e-mail

Though our engineering graduates are a class of their own, a serious lacuna is felt in their skill-set. Apart from learning their subjects, they should acquire management skills too.

While only little attention is paid for these skills during the graduation, post-graduation would be the best time to acquire these skills.

This would surely widen the scope of job opportunities.

Pulkit Soni, Indore

Though our country produces thousands of engineering graduates, the industry faces manpower shortage. Most of the educated youth are not employable as they lack additional skills. Hence our leaders are emphasising on acquiring additional skills. The curriculum and teaching methods must involve basic skills such as communication and practical training. The industries should also be involved in the training programmes.

A. Jacob Sahayam,

Thiruvananthapuram

Yes, I agree with the statement. In our country very few educational institutions pay attention in imparting additional skills.

While everybody is interested only in the marks that their children get in the exams, marks alone do not teach a person to deal with the situations. Though I was the topper of my college, I couldn’t get through the IBM interview. So a good engineer must acquire additional skills apart from what is taught in the curriculum.

Srikanth, e-mail

While a large number of technical graduates are passing out of their colleges, additional skills are definitely required and the suggestion should be considered by all.

R. Swaminathan, USA

Engineering graduates have technical skills and there is no doubt about it. But additional skills such as management, interpersonal and communication skills play a major role in the latter part of their life and in receiving promotions.

K.V. Rao, Bangalore

While engineering disciplines have fixed curriculum, the rapid technological development calls for additional skills that are required to handle the problems that are arising in our day-to-day life.

Also, today’s engineering graduates are called upon to take up jobs that require a certain level of knowledge in disciplines such as management, HRD, accountancy, banking, labour relations, etc. Only sufficient exposure to these subjects would enable a person in a management level to become a good decision maker.

As large number of graduates are passing out of the colleges every year, the additional skills acquired by the graduates will be of great advantage. Additional skills are must even for those who are planning to become entrepreneurs.

T.R. Anandan, Coimbatore

According to Nasscom, the country’s 347 institutions of higher education and 16,885 colleges produce around 4.95 lakh technical graduates. Still, the industry complains about not getting the right candidates. In the software sector also, according to a McKinsey Global Institute and Nasscom study, only 25 per cent of the engineering graduates are in the employable category and India could face a shortfall of five lakh IT professional by 2010.

In this context, urging engineering graduates to acquire additional skills has come not a day too soon. It has been found that most engineering graduates lack communication skills. Though they do well in technical tests, most of them don’t get through the Group Discussion. Therefore, students should understand that mere possession of a degree is not enough. Personality development, time-management and entrepreneurial skills must be acquired. On their part, our universities and colleges should update the syllabus so that the students on getting their degrees become ‘employable’.

S. Nallasivan, Tirunelveli

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