Just 10% graduates placed in IT firms employable in TN: Study

Even though Tamil Nadu has the second largest number of engineering graduates, and around 59 universities and 2,267 colleges, students graduating from here do not have an edge over others in terms of employability.

According to the National Employability Report 2011, released by IT Minister Kapil Sibal recently, only 10 per cent of the engineering graduates from the state placed by IT companies are employable. This puts Tamil Nadu at the bottom of the list of 16 states surveyed.

The stakeholders, industry, teachers and students point at different aspects of the issue.

“It is the increasing number of students coming out of the neo and non-academic managed colleges that contribute to the non-employability or under-employability,” says Shankar Srinivasan, chief people officer, Cognizant Technology Solutions.

 

Established institutions such as IIT, NIT, BITS Pilani, Anna University and PSG continue to deliver on the brand promise. However, in the last decade or so, several hundred new engineering colleges that have sprung up, face difficulty in attracting top faculty. Many of them, therefore, do not have the ability to attract the best students, he added.

While the students might be technically proficient, sometimes they require additional behavioural interventions such as communication, presentation, confidence and other soft skills, he said.

A spokesperson from auto major Hyundai said, “Hyundai recruits primarily from Tier-I colleges and we have so for not faced any problem with students not being conversant with English. Having said that, we have observed that there is a big gap between the preparedness of the student to join the industry and the industry needs.”

The company says most of the students have joined the courses due to parental pressure or on the advise of friends and peers, rather than their aptitude, and many among these have only theoretical knowledge and barely any practical knowledge.

However, students feel that the problem is with the faculty. The colleges are situated in remote places, and not all can attract good professors. In many cases, professors themselves are not motivated to teach and students often don’t get the opportunity to learn well.

Meanwhile, there are institutions which go that extra mile to help students develop soft skills and employability. For instance, in Madras University, students of the MBA department have organised themselves into a club called VOX – Voice of Excellence. Around seven people are elected to be a part of this and it is their job to teach communication skills to other students. TS Praveen, an MBA student and a member of VOX, says that communication and domain knowledge are the two key issues which students lack.

Placement officer at the Madras University and head of the initiative Aravamudan says, “Academic freedom, which will help the institutions to change the curriculum based on the needs of the industries, is the need of the hour.”

The industry says that the curriculum should be changed and students be trained in behavioural and communication skills. The solution lies in developing good faculty in large numbers and creating capacity that will help produce more and more good engineers, professionals, graduates, technicians, and so on.

However, there is some good news for Tamil Nadu. Employers still flock to the state to recruit students. According to Nasscom, in 2011, 40,000 students were recruited from TN, the highest in the country. Of these, 16,000 were recruited from 25 engineering colleges across the state.