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Unusual craze for Civil & mechanical streams !!!

The post-recession scenario has seen a renewed interest among engineering aspirants to opt for core engineering streams like mechanical & civil. This scenario is particularly visible in tier II & tier III colleges.

Tier II colleges we mean some State level Govt Engg Colleges & well known Private engineering colleges in existence for last 10-15 years.

Tier III colleges we mean a vast majority of Private colleges established in last 3-4 years.

During recession period, the placements at most of tier II colleges were almost negligible. The IT services companies which were the main and only recruiters from these campuses did not turn up for campus drives and even delayed the joining of those who were selected. This has resulted in a big hue & cry and the option for the new admission seekers was to play safe and opt for core streams. Among the core streams the mechanical was in most demand as in most of the colleges civil branch was not offered. The saying was that these are evergreen streams and are recession proof.

As the demand for IT & CS streams reduced to a great level in those years ,these colleges have started to make efforts to get approval for other core streams like civil and electrical.

Almost all new engineering colleges established in 2008 & 2009 made sure to have mechanical & civil branches in their courses. This was driven by country wide waves rather than a well considered reasoning process.

The recession we witnessed in 2008 was broadly considered as the IT recession by the then engineering aspirants and their parents but in actual the recession had started with global financial & real estate meltdown , slowdown in big economies like US & Europe , poor performance of big core sector companies globally including India and it was very usual that these IT services companies saw drastic reduction in IT spending by their clients who were primary party affected by this recession.

Even before this recession the recruitments by core sector companies from these Tier II & Tier III colleges were almost negligle. But this went unnoticed ,then from 2009 onwards we saw heavy rush for mechanical & civil branches in these colleges. There was not much thought given by college managements & regulatory bodies that how could be such a high number of faculty will come for these streams at once & more specifically for civil stream. Almost 70% out of the  total civil seats available in engineering colleges got approved in these two years.There is so high faculty attrition rate in Pvt colleges and the limited available faculty keep on moving from one college to another with hike in salaries. Even the regulating bodies hardly have any data on the number of faculty available for core streams.

In the academic session 2011-12 admissions, the demand for these two streams has got so high that even in the colleges where in departments like CS & ECE  50-60% seat were vacant managed to fill full quota of seats in mechanical & civil branches. Streams like Mechanical & Civil need much more investments & expertise for developing the lab & physical infrastructure , faculty with rich industry experience only could make students employable. In majority of colleges this is practically not possible.

Even in the good private colleges with good placement records ,the maximum placements are done in IT services company. These IT companies have high number of demand at entry level & they recruit students all across the streams with certain aptitude level, good communication skills and desire to learn. Most of the cos train these appointees at their training centres. 

But this is not the case with core sector cos. Firstly the recruitment numbers are quite less as compared to IT services companies. They need graduates with strong fundamental knowledge in their respective core areas. The core sector companies are very selective in campus drives and restricted majorly to IITs, NITs & a handful of other colleges.

This struggle to fill seats by a majority of new colleges started in last 3-4 years might result in a huge number of unemployed engineering graduates in the coming years. They are getting a high number of students from small towns & cities where the students and parents are not much informed about the colleges and placements. Infact we will start to see the effect from this year onwards as majority of colleges will see the first batch completing the course.   

As the 2012-13 admission session is approaching, the aspiring students and parents need to invest time in selecting the course and college. In the coming years  ,the engineering graduates with a reasonable technical knowledge will be able to make successful careers . That’s why the college from where they pursue course is of prime importance .