Nasscom Survey findings criticised by AICTE Chief

Updated on: Wednesday, November 28, 2012

AICTE chairman SS Mantha came down heavily on the surveys done by Nasscom and other firms which said only 25% graduates in India are employable. Interacting with TOI during his visit to the Nagpur University on Tuesday, he questioned the very basis of these surveys, stating those were limited to very few people.

"India has over 1.5 million engineering degree and 1 million diploma seats. Of them, about one million graduate every year. If we considered survey figures, then about 7.5 lakh engineers should be rendered unemployed. If cumulative average of five years is taken into account then it will have 35 lakh unemployed engineers," he said.

He said this situation would have led to civil war but the reality was in stark contrast. "This is certainly not the case and maximum of them are getting jobs. The only problem is they are underemployed and not getting the deserving salary. These surveys were conducted without any logical background and thus create confusion."

The AICTE chief stated that Nasscom had taken database of candidates coming for interviews in 500 IT companies and arrived at these conclusions. "But India is a vast country and these findings are far from reality," he said. This is for the first time that any apex body had come out openly against Nasscom survey.

Mantha reiterated AICTE's stand of improving quality education, stating that it had started an e-governance project under by collecting data from all the states. He however admitted that no survey was conducted on actual number of jobs in engineering and other professional sectors in India and their demand-supply gap. "For an important branch like mining, having tremendous demand in the market, there are only 654 seats in the entire country. Similarly, for architecture, only 7,000 seats are available," he lamented.

The former pro-VC of SNDT University admitted that there were concerns on the quality of engineering entrance examinations conducted by the states. MHT-CET entrance conducted by the Maharashtra government for admission to engineering, medical, pharmacy and veterinary courses has qualifying marks of just 1/200. "This is precisely the reason we have brought the concept of joint engineering examination (JEE) which will test the candidate's skills," he said.

He ridiculed the present school system, terming it as "redundant" as marks of Std X and XII were not considered for the admission to professional courses. "The students have completely lost the focus on the board examination and started ignoring it. We therefore have decided to give 40% weightage to the Std XII board examination and 60% to JEE so that students should focus equally on both."

Mantha said they had started acting tough on the erring and illegal colleges and had closed down 25 of them for dearth of facilities. "We also issue notices and advertisements from time to time, warning students and parents to fully check institute's credentials on AICTE website."

He said the states had failed to submit their perspective plans for new colleges to AICTE and so far only two or three of them had done so.

Nasscom Survey findings criticised by AICTE Chief

More Education news