While India celebrates Sundar Pichai taking over as CEO of Google, and as his alma mater IIT Kharagpur waves the flag of their rewarded efforts, there are many current engineering students not inclined towards their fields of study at all. An Economic Survey Report released in early 2015 by a National Committee has ranked India 48th in the world in terms of employability and research in core engineering fields; just above Russia among BRICS nations. It says that most Indian engineers lack the capacity for innovation and are hence deemed unemployable at the global level.Interaction with several IIT students and a study of some recent statistics has given us fairly strong answers stating thus.

IIT – Kharagpur, Roorkee and Bombay house several extracurricular clubs that encourage students to indulge in their hobbies. These clubs, STAB (IIT Bombay) and Hobbies Club (IIT Roorkee) were started by professors with the motive of providing recreation to stressed students. Now, rather than recreation, students have begun to pursue hobbies as a career and are using these clubs to hone their skills. Shivani Das, a final year student from IIT Bombay says, “BTech is just another degree for me, it’s not what I want to pursue. I am currently doing an applied diploma in Graphic Designing along with my degree and have started preparations for my entrance exam to NID.” Another final year student from IIT Kharagpur, Adil Jhunjhunwala says, “I’m not interested in working for others. My aim is to excel in BTech, then do a good management/finance course and join my father’s business.”

While the colleges only want to provide stress busters to the students, the actual problem is that many of these students don’t like what they are studying. One such student from IIT-B, Lokesh Ramban failed his first year of engineering due to lack of time to focus on studies and then went on to pursue his passion for tennis. Several students on Facebook have commented about their fading desires to be an engineer and consider their options to fly abroad. In fact, professors with IIT backgrounds earn more money than those working in corporates, which is now a motivation for students to take up teaching as a full-time career.

If other careers are so tempting, then why waste an engineering seat at all? Pranay Dadha, student from IIT Bombay says, “After coming here I discovered myself 360 degrees. I realized I possessed skills other than studying which would be more interesting to make as a career.” Students feel that to some extent they lost their creativity during the rigorous preparation of JEE and the independence in IITs helps them explore the same. “My parents brought me up with a single ambition and taught me that engineering is a high paying, stable career. I started going to coaching institutes at the age of 12. Had I been older or mature, I would have looked for other options,” says Sheetal Raghani, student from IIT Madras.

Similar surveys conducted last year showed that up to 90% BE/BTech graduates are working in fields unrelated to engineering. It is also not unknown that every year up to 60% engineering graduates take up management courses and get placed as Business Analysts or AVPs in private banks. Then there also those who apply for Civil Services exams like UPSC and join the IAS. Arvind Kejriwal, Manohar Parrikar, Ashok Khemka, Kiran Bedi, are some of the well-known IITians who took up civil services as a career. Besides, the big bulls in the finance industry like Raghuram Rajan and D. Subbarao are also former students of IITs. Although big names like these bring better efficiency to their fields with IIT education, they further highlight the results of such surveys. Today PSU banks are appealing against the Supreme Court order not allowing them to hire IITians on campus. PSUs say they are keen to harvest the talent and intelligence of such students. (source) What happens if this appeal receives a nod? In which direction is the student creativity being channelled? Banking is not the sector you expect an engineer to enter, especially when such survey statistics point to the same idea that engineers are taking up non-engineering jobs out of college.

Every year the government invests lakhs of rupees on each such student. The number of IITs keeps increasing and the funds required to set up their infrastructure are enormous. Recently, meetings were held in Kashmir to launch an IIT in the valley as well. The broader view is that while the number of IITs and the students applying to them is increasing, how many of these students are actually making valuable contributions in core engineering? The surveys conducted over the years give similar views about India’s falling rank in innovation and growing divergence of engineers in other fields.