Need to Focus on Developing Employability Skills in our Engineering Graduates

 Dr Kalam has rightly said that India does not have problem of unemployment but unemployibility. The graduates lack other skills beside the academic or technical skills. The top three most important general skills identified were integrity, reliability and teamwork, while the top three most important specific skills are entrepreneurship, communication in English and use of modern tools and technologies.

If colleges want to improve the employability of their graduates, they have to focus on reducing these important skill gaps through improvements in curriculum and teaching methods. The Universities are required to play a significant role for the same so that graduates have to be able to formulate, analyse, and solve a real life problem using standard engineering techniques.

Each institution should define the set of skills that a graduate is supposed to have after each semester. Further, colleges need to change pedagogical style from teacher-centric to student-centric, and include more assignments for students to independently analyse and apply tools on real life problems. Only through such changes in the teaching-learning process will the future engineers become more employable.

Swami Vivekananda always used to say that “Education is the manifestation of perfection already in men”, “We are all powerful, and we can do everything”. This quote inspires us to upgrade ourselves continuously through solving real life problems by applying the knowledge gained in the classroom lectures.        

       Employers, universities and professional bodies agree that we need to develop professionals who are highly skilled and ready to face the challenges of increased competition. Educational curriculum needs to be examined from time to time in order to ensure that the education received by students is relevant and up to date. Industrial training received by students need to be looked into and revised in term of its effectiveness to assured that students are clear with their job scopes later on. Besides that, instructors should practice employability skill during teaching and learning session so that it could assist students to understand ways of applying the skills by themselves.

Motivators and counselors have to cooperate with institutions in the process of giving guidance and inspirations to students regarding the ways to increase employability skill from time to time in order to be excellent workers. Apart from that, apprentice programs are suggested to be carried out so that students will be able to understand employability skill better. This program will also serve the purpose to make students realized that employability skill is as important as technical skills.    

      

The higher education sector is characterized by diversity; course and student profiles are different and universities aim to develop students with distinct characteristics or attributes. Universities are required to work in developing employability skills in their students by providing academic staff with relevant support and resources, integrating these skills into curriculum and course design, providing students with work placements and exposure to professional settings and providing advice and guidance through career services. The following are few suggestions:

1.   An Employability Strategy Fund should be created;
2.   The employability skills in all university curriculum are to be explicitly identified;
3.   The teaching and assessment of employability skills are to be enhanced;
4.   Provide funding for universities to systematically review their work on developing 
       employability skills.

       If the strategies related to the programmes for the development of employability skills are formulated and monitored religiously then Dr Kalam’s vision of India being a developed country will be achieved in a true sense.