In every media interaction and now, even social gatherings, I get asked if Indian growth story will get affected if no one studies Civil/Chemical/Mechanical/Electrical and everyone only wants to do CS, AI, and at best ECE. How will the new infrastructure be built. How will we become a hub for manufacturing. Can we be VishwaGuru with everyone studying only AI.
And I tell them to just relax. Lots of students are studying non-CS/IT engineering branches. One can check AICTE data for the same. There is no shortage of pieces of paper declaring someone to be a graduate in Civil Engineering. And it takes only 4 years to print more paper, if there is need.
The problem is that degrees are only on paper and do not reflect learning. Industry is genuinely worried that they are not finding good engineers. But that problem is also true for software industry. They too are not finding good engineers.
Who are joining non-IT engineering programs. There are, of course, rare students who for whatever reasons are interested in these programs. But these are rare. In any given college students prefer CS and related programs over other engineering programs. This is true of IITs and this is true of Tier 3 colleges. But a lot of students think about non-CS in a more competitive college versus CS in less competitive college and there are enough who choose non-CS in a more competitive college. This comparison happens not just between IIT Civil versus NIT CS. It also happens between Civil Engineering at an affiliated college versus CS at a private university. (Affiliated colleges are cheaper and a lot of students/parents believe that getting a degree from a government owned technical university is somehow more valuable and education does not matter.) This comparison is here to stay and we will always find enough students taking up non-IT engineering programs.
There are some smart students who take benefit from this lopsided preference of the society. They can get admission to a college which provides much better overall education than they would have got if all branches had equal interest from students, and they get better placement too. Don't believe me, let me explain.
Most people would look at placement data and see that average of CS batch is higher than average of Civil batch. They also notice that the highest salaries in CS are much higher than the highest salaries in Civil. And they assume that they are the ones who will get those highest salaries. But smart people will think differently. They will understand that it is very difficult to be the topper of CS batch while it is much easier in a less competitive branch. It is aided by the fact that a lot of students who join non-IT branches keep wondering if they took the right decision and whether they should have taken up CS in a less competitive college. Their peers also demotivate them. The smart people will further notice that the top few jobs to Civil engineering graduates are of higher amount than the median of CS. And hence the expected placement is better in Civil for these people. (Of course, I must quickly add that I would never recommend anyone to choose a branch based on placement data or a faulty concept like Return-on-investment. But man people still do that.)
So, overall, I don't see a problem in terms of number of people opting for non-IT branches. The problem is that a very large number of people are not getting the education they deserve in every discipline.
The related question is if it is possible for a top institution to attract better (read, more motivated) students to non-IT programs. Yes, it is possible. The simple method is to project placement data differently (unfortunately, people will look at placement data). Instead of projecting data in terms of discipline, if they project data in terms of CGPA, and point out that the placement is strongly correlated with CGPA (and to a lesser extent with a discipline), the craze for certain disciplines will go down. Also, if they don't already offer minor in CS/AI, do so. The students will have the confidence that if they don't get a job in their chosen discipline, they can go back to IT recruiters in the final year. And, finally, offer dual major. A student admitted to Civil should have the option to pick up his/her second major in CS/AI. This, again, gives confidence to the student in case things don't go right in Civil, and also produces inter-disciplinary engineers which are so important for the industry.
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6 comments:
Hi Dheeraj,
I am a fan of your Blogs!
However, this time you started to solve the problem of finding good engineers for India's growth story, but ended up solving the placement issues of non-IT engineers!
BTW, we are already Vishwa Guru !
Satyen
Thanks, @sak. We had actually done some research on placement numbers a few years ago and found that the correlation of offered CTC was much stronger with CGPA than with the department, and we believe that if this information is presented in this fashion, many students who may have genuine interest in non-IT disciplines but are discouraged by society, would take up their passion. And it is always a good idea for people to do what they love to do.
It would be interesting to see if those non-IT high CG folks got an offer for the core discipline or in IT itself? Few year back I had asked a prof in IIT Civil on the placements and he mentioned almost 100% get into non civil jobs. It is a matter of whether the core sector can afford the kind of salaries that IIT grads expect?
@Shiva, The high salaries for non-IT graduates are in non-core. But even in IT, the high salaries in core are limited. A lot of IT graduates are also going non-core. And many who join core, they leave it after a few years. The hope is that if students know that even after Civil they can get a highly paid non-core job, it will shift the balance when it comes to comparison between CS in Tier 2 versus Civil in Tier 1. And as the closing rank gap reduces between CS and Civil (or core engineering), many students who have some interest in core engineering will be able to choose those branches with confidence and not be mocked at.
Prof. Dheeraj, thanks for your insightful post, it is very analytically enlightening. However, it may help to point out that there appears to be an assumption that non-IT graduates may end up with higher CGPAs. This may not be always true as some of the subjects in non-IT disciplines may be as tough as IT disciplines, if not tougher to score high grades. For example, I have experienced first hand through some students as well as peers that subjects such as Digital Signal Processing (DSP, typically core in ECE) are as tough to score high grades as an IT subject such as Algorithms in CS field. Maybe you can share some thoughts on the basis why you think that non-IT graduates may score higher CGPAs? Unless I have misunderstood or missed something! Thanks and regards.
@Prof. Naidu, I am saying that if a person has an option to be the last person to be admitted in EE and the first person to be admitted in say, Chemical, he will have a tougher competition in EE and lesser competition in Chemical. (Unless one assumes that there is absolutely no correlation between the admission criteria and performance in the program.) And because of that higher/lower competition, the CGPA will be lower/higher. And many opportunities open up for higher CGPA (at least, that is what the data showed to us).
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