HYDERABAD: Andhra Pradesh can make for an intriguing case study given its love for the engineering degree, a fascination which is not rooted in logic. Currently, the state has 2.78 lakh engineering seats for the 2.02 lakh students who cleared Eamcet-2012. But the large number of seats and students do not reflect the ugly truth of engineering education in AP - just about 48% of engineering graduates here manage to land jobs.
So why has engineering remained the most preferred professional course despite its dismal record? Observers note that the state's emphasis on engineering is a predictable result of centring educational reforms around 'professional education' which has, over a period of time, become synonymous only with engineering education.
What has put tech colleges high up on the priority list of students from Andhra Pradesh is perhaps the myth that Hyderabad has lucrative jobs in IT industry for all who pass out with a B.Tech degree. The fact that medical colleges, which occupied the other bright end of AP's professional education spectrum, have very few seats to offer (in 2012 the number is still 4,845) has also aided the engineering boom.
Further encouraging this slant towards tech education was the state government's populist fee reimbursement scheme enabling students from Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Economically Backward Classes (EBC) to pursue professional degrees for free. This in turn caused an increase in the number of engineering colleges from 375 in 2009 to 717 in 2012 with managements finding it profitable to milk the scheme by drawing funds in the name of even fake candidates. The state at present has 21% of a total of 3,393 engineering colleges in the country.
The focus on professional education, however, dates back to the engineering boom, educationists said. "The whole country had gone through a shift in focus from vanilla degrees to professional degrees and Hyderabad, since 2000, has been a hub of technical education as part of the IT boom," explains VS Rao, director, BITS-Hyderabad. But a decade after the country witnessed the IT boom, students have been focusing on career options other than engineering in states like Maharashtra and Karnataka. When compared to 717 of them in AP, Maharashra and Karnataka have just 350 and 185 tech colleges with, respectively, 1.7 lakh and 65,000 seats. "These states have encouraged other courses like biotechnology, pharma and law. But in AP, the growth of other courses has been blocked as, right at the intermediate level, students are made to take up the MPC (Maths-Physics-Chemistry) stream in pursuit of an engineering degree," said PM Bhargava, former vice-chairman, National Knowledge Commission.
About 60% of an average of 7.4 lakh students who take admission in intermediate colleges in the state opt for the MPC stream. "The number of students opting for the biology, commerce and humanities streams has been falling steadily over the past ten years," said P Madhusudan Reddy, general secretary of the Government Intermediate College Association. In short, the engineering dream is so big in the psyche of AP students that most cannot think beyond it. "Both my sister and I opted for engineering and my parents were sure that we would land jobs. In our colony, most students opt for MPC and go for Eamcet engineering coaching as it is easy to thus bag a seat," said S Sajini who secured 37{+t}{+h} rank in Eamcet-2012.
The state has, however, failed to maintain a good standard of education in tech colleges. "Recent inspection by AICTE has revealed that 40% of colleges in AP do not fulfill even the minimum requirements as regards faculty and infrastructure," said a source in the higher education department. A recent study conducted on the basis of AMCAT, India's largest employability test, revealed that 57% of engineering graduates in AP (among other states) lack basic employability skills like fluency in English.
Sensing a fall in the quality of education, the state government has asked All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) to stop sanctioning new tech colleges in the state and neither permit additional seats at existing colleges. However, succumbing to pressure from colleges, the government has increased the fee structure in 67 colleges which are known as providing better education than the rest. "The fee hike has created a catch-22 situation in the state. The government on the one hand promoted engineering education and, on the other, increased the fee only in those institutions which provide better education than the rest," said VARK Prasad, director of Save Education Society.
However, there is finally some change unfolding in AP. Poor placements at engineering colleges over the last few years has led to a drop in the number of students signing up for engineering. From 3.16 lakh students who appeared for Eamcet in 2010, the figure has dropped to 2.83 lakh this year. In 2011, just 2.6 lakh students had appeared for the exam.
Meanwhile, the state is taking up its biggest crackdown on colleges ever. "A special task force will inspect each college and will penalise those found to be in violation of AICTE requirements," said Ajay Jain, commissioner, technical education. But the late realisation might not change the fate of education in the state which has to go through massive structural changes.
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