Unspoken Truth about Tech Education in India

“94% of engineering graduates are not fit for hiring”, is it true?

In 2018, a study done by Aspiring Minds claimed that 95 percent of engineers in the country were not fit for software development jobs. Veterans like TV Mohandas Pai and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw disagreed with the study.

In an interview with Times of India, CP Gurnani, CEO & MD of Tech Mahindra said “The top 10 IT companies take only 6% of the engineering graduates. What happens to the remaining 94%?”.

Here I am going to give my opinion on the quality of engineering graduates I have come across in many years of experience. I am going to share few stories :)

Campus interviews at well-known colleges

I have been to many colleges to hire freshers. I have seen a significant downfall in the quality of engineering graduates.

In one of my previous jobs, we used to visit a prestigious college in Bangalore to hire fresh graduates. It was back in 2010, after the first screening we shortlisted 6 candidates. We wanted to hire 2 of them. It was really hard for us to reject any of those candidates. Finally, we hired 2 and gave internship offers to others.

Very next year we went there with the same expectation and we were disappointed. This time we wanted to hire 4 but came back with 1. It was really hard to select more than 1.

My batchmate with fake experience

A few of my batchmates and I were working in Bangalore and staying in a big house together. It had been a couple of years after we graduated. A batchmate of ours landed up at our place with fake experience to find a job in Bangalore. His resume was very impressive, but he knew nothing. Well, he did not even know how to write a loop.

He spent 3 months talking to many companies. At the end of 3 months, he got a job. We were surprised but happy. We were happy that he would move out of our place.

Many candidates with experience did not know the basics of Computer Science

A couple of years ago, I wanted to hire 2 engineers between 0–2 years of experience. We gave a contract to a startup that does online programming challenges and shortlists 50–70 candidates for you. They gave us a list of 55 candidates that completed the challenges.

We started interviewing these candidates. Our first candidate from Delhi, we interviewed him over a telecall. He sounded very impressive with good work to back his competency. We called him over to Bangalore. The next round of interviews came as a shock to us. He was not able to write a simple sort algorithm.

We decided to start our interview process with basic computer science concepts, data structure, and all. We were surprised to see many candidates who had experience had no clue about trees, how OS works etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying all candidates were like that. We found 2 candidates who were pretty good, we made them an offer and they joined us. They are a good friend of mine and extraordinary engineers.

Based on this experience, I would say there are 2 good engineers per 55 in the market that is close to what the Aspiring Minds claimed.

A fresh graduate who claims to have done a lot but could not code

A story of another interview experience, a candidate who had built a startup. He claims the startup failed because he was not able to raise funds. He went ga-ga about his capabilities and how he used to interview people at his startup. When it came to writing a simple piece of code, he gave up.

He sounded great on the telephonic interview, but could not code at all. His attitude was a problem as well but I wanted to see if he could code.

Why the quality of Engineers is degrading

The gap between the college and the industry is widening. There are many reasons for this.

• Teachers and professors at colleges have no real experience.
• Engineering education has become just like another degree.
• The outdated curriculum at universities.
• Students get only theoretical knowledge, not focus on practicals.
• No real-life projects.

Final Thoughts

I agree the situation is bad. But there is hope. There are many bright engineers I have come across. Some of the institutes are trying to cope up with the technology, but technology moves fast.

I think 50% of the students who are pursuing technical education are just doing that for the heck of it. It's just a way for them to get a graduation degree.

Bright people from the industry should come together to reform the education system so that this gap can be reduced.