NEW DELHI, DHNS: Though higher education institutions in India produce lakhs of engineers every year, less than half of the graduates get job opportunity through campus placements.
The placement figures of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are better than other engineering colleges in the country as over 60% of their students are recorded to have job offers during placement drive on campus.
But, the premier technical institutes also witnessed a fall in the placement of their students by 5% last year over those of the previous year.
As per government statistics, 41.57% of the engineering graduates could get job offers through campus placement in 2012-13, 41.49% in 2013-14, 44.08% in 2014-15 and 46.13% in 2015-16 while the number of students who successfully completed their engineering programme in various disciplines remained 6,57,100, 7,13,190, 7,60,259 and, 7,85,354 in the respective years.
The number of engineering students who were placed in 2016-17 came at 3,32,069, according to the All India Council for Technical Institutes (AICTE).
The percentage of the students placed in 2016-17, however, remains unknown as the council has not yet compiled the data on the number of students who successfully cleared their degree programme in 2016-17.
A total of 7,83,239 students were enrolled to a total of 3,450 engineering colleges (other than IITs and National Institutes of Technology) in 2016-17.
The statistics includes students who pursued under-graduate programme in architecture and town planning as well as students who did their Masters of Computer Applications (MCA) from the technical institutes under the AICTE.
AICTE chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe said various initiatives have been taken by the council since last year to streamline the technical education in the country.
"We have approved a 10-point action plan to bring reforms in the technical education. As part of our action plan, we have already notified a revised and updated curriculum for engineering programmes, introduced mandatory industry training for students, three week induction programme for fresh students among others," he said.
To address the demand and supply gap, he said, a committee has been set up to look into the issue in detail and identify the engineering disciplines in which no more new seats are required to be created.
"Based on the recommendations of the committee, we will make a long term plan. To work in this direction, we had asked all the states last year to tell us as to how many new engineering seats are required in their jurisdiction. Most of the states are yet to respond. That's why we have set up a committee to look into the issue and make recommendations," he said.