Poor Employability - a national problem

This morning, when I saw this news, I was shocked to the core.
Read this: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-educationplus/article3010274.ece

The text goes like this:

Engineering education is expanding but quality engineers aren't being produced by it. The quality of education dished out can be judged from the scenario that the percentage of ready-to-deploy engineers for IT jobs is dismally low at 2.68 per cent of the among five lakh engineers passing out every year in the country. In fact, among these five lakh engineers, only 17.45 per cent are employable for the IT services sector, while a dismal 3.51 per cent are appropriately trained to be directly deployed on projects. Only 2.68 per cent are employable in IT product companies, which require greater understanding of computer science and algorithms, according to the National Employability Report of Engineering Graduates.

What can we do to counter this problem?

We can all talk about change and that is not an easy task. Bringing a change in our whole education system is a huge task. But certain small steps can help us to counter this issue.

Many of these points are proposed, but never acted upon. It is better to make the basic steps first and then go for bigger challenges.

Step 1: Engineering exam system must give more importance to problem solving. Now people can get away by writing a 72 page pure-theory answer sheet; people pass with glory but the industry suffers. This will definitely make the pass percentage to go low (as low as 10% !!!) - let it be. Students have chances to overcome in one more attempt. But it will ensure that they have to work harder.

Step 2: Industry and university must establish small cells within the campus to expose people to soft skills and professional expectations. Even if people pass the hard skill tests, they fail this test miserably. We have seen companies training people in teaching them how to write proper emails!!! From 2012, where are we heading?

Step 3: Engineering college lecturers and professors must compulsorily attend industry training and impart that to students. This must happen every year. There must be a reverse feedback on the teaching community by students. Then real quality teachers will emerge. Currently teachers feel left out by the industry.

Step 4: More online learning must happen. This will help a good professor to reach more students, by overcoming the physical location related issues.

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