Engg Streams with High career growth opportunities
Published On: 2/14/2012
In the earlier era, engineering meant either Civil or Mechanical or Electrical. Interdisciplinary meant Electronics and Telecommunications. With the advent of computing, Computer Science & Information Technology became the new craze. As knowledge expanded and new challenges rose in the corporate field, new disciplines emerged as potential fields of study in many academic domains.
There are a few engineering streams though are quite old in existence but they were under the wraps. With a large number of students aspiring for just 3-4 streams over the years , there has been a mismatch in the number of available students , the job openings & the quality of education .There are not enough opportunities to support a large base of students graduating in these 3-4 streams.
There are a few streams where the job opportunities are really high for the competent graduates ,though the aspiring students don’t have enough insight into these streams. Even the number of seats are somehow increasing for these streams. Lets have a brief discussion on these streams though not so popular but holds good potential for employment.
Petroleum Engineering : Petroleum Engineering is one such engineering program which holds very good job prospects with very good scale offered by the recruiting companies. The average package is quite high in the range of 6-6.5 lakh for the graduates. The scope is good for both marketing as well as process / manufacturing domains. The available seats have also increased in last 2-3 years with exclusive Universities offering this program. Under AIEEE, students in the ranks between 30000- 50000 should look for Petroleum Engg as this could be one of the best options.
Power Engineering : The other very promising stream is Power Engineering. This stream also holds very good job prospects in the power sector companies. Though there are limited seats but still for aspirants who could not make it to big names ,could opt for this stream. National Power Training Institute under Ministry of Power ,Govt. of India exclusively offers this stream. There are 9 NPTI’s in India. Placements in these institutes are very good but still we see that in most of the states where NPTI’s are there , students prefer CS ,ECE, ME streams in Private colleges rather than Power Engg in NPTI’s though Power Engg is far far better than CSE, ECE or ME in Private colleges where the maximum salaries are just 3.0 – 3.25 lakh offered by IT mass recruiters. It seems that most of the students and parents are not well informed about this stream.
Aeronautical Engineering : Aeronautical Engineering also holds good prospects . There is really a huge demand for competent Aeronautical Engineers in India in recent years. We have a very few institutions offering degree level course in Aeronautical Engineering. There is need for more number of seats for 4 year B.E / B.Tech course. The increase in number of seats in these streams will also help in maintaining a proper balance in enrolments in different engineering streams. In streams like CS, ECE , ME or civil the number of admitted students exceeds far more than the actual engineers required by the industry.
Though there are number of institutes approved by DGCA offering AME courses but in majority of institutes the quality of education is very poor and these institutes are primarily driven to attract a large number of students from small town & cities. Infact these institutes are able to attract good number of students for enrolments but these institutes might not be able to develop ready to employ graduates because of a number of reasons.
Agricultural Engineering : Agricultural Engineering also holds good potential. The demand at masters and post doctorate might be quite high in near future. The urgent need to incorporate technology & better methods of agricultural practices will warrant a good number of engineers with specialization in Agricultural engineers.The major work areas under Agricultural Engineering includes Farm Machinery, Soil & water Engineering, Food Processing, Energy Studies for Agricultural.
There a number of exclusive Agricultural Universities in India. Quite a large number of students don’t seem interesting in pursuing this stream but there are very good research and employment opportunities in this field. Even the scope for self employment & independent consultancy is also very high.
Naval Architecture & Ship Building : The scope in Naval Architecture & Ship Building has quite a good scope both in domestic and international offers. The pay packages are also quite high as compared to some of the most sough engineering streams. The stream again is offered by a limited institutes and almost all institutions are situated in coastal areas in South India. Here also the supply is pretty less than the demand. The main institutions are IIT Madras, Coachin University of Science & Technology. Coachin University conducts a national level test CUSAT for admissions in this stream. CUSAT placements for this stream are very impressive. At times a single student has even 3-4 offers with average salary close to 6 lakh per annum in domestic offers.
Food Technology : Food Technology if done from good institution has good career prospects. India has a huge population and the size of Food Processing industry is growing day by day. In this sector also ,the companies find it difficult to get the required talent. Food Processing industry has again very good prospect both for self employment and employment in big companies.
These are some of the engineering streams which have very bright career prospects but somehow there has been not much interest shown by engineering aspirants to opt for these streams . Both Govt. & Private institutions should try to build competent departments for these streams to fill in the gap between supply and demand. To develop competent departments for these streams will require large pool of resources but the well established education providers in private sector with corporate tie ups should look for opportunities to build competent departments to meet future demands for competent professionals . Infact in streams like CS,ECE,ME or Civil in near future, the number of passed out graduates will be very high in comparison to the actual requirement by the industry. There is need on the part of the education providers and authorities to make the best chances of employability for the passed out graduates. The focus should also be on raising the bar for streams which have good scope for self employability and entrepreneurship.