The recently proposed Exit Test for engineering students graduating from Government and private colleges, to evaluate their employability, is a much longed-for move. There are more than seven lakh engineering students who graduate every year from approximately 3,000 registered technical institutes in India and not even 30 per cent students getting relevant jobs. These statistics point towards the lack of requisite skill sets and understanding of the subject to make students job ready. This makes the need for proper career guidance even more crucial as it can make or break the future of an individual, not just in college but in high school as well.
There is a need for students to be guided at the very onset of the stream selection at school and make them re-evaluate their decision of blindly joining engineering. Engineering and medicine, in particular, are the two most picked as well as most forced career streams for students, who pick up these subjects in school without proper knowledge about the future prospects available in fields other than science.
Moreover, engineering is one of the only fields in India where colleges still rely only on marks instead of assessing a student’s personality or purpose.
Proper counselling and guidance by professionals will enable the students to make an informed and firm decision of choosing engineering as a career and instead of blindly joining engineering, they will be able to consider opting for other streams like business management, law, psychology or designing. Meanwhile, the engineering students will be encouraged to develop skills besides focusing more on marks or clearing entrance exams.
Career counselling will also impact the thought process of the parents and teachers as they will start emphasising more on developing a students’ skills rather than forcing rote learning.
For high school students, the future lies ahead. Thus, for them, planning must start well in advance and in order to plan right, there is a need for the right guide. An Exit Test catering to the employability problem is poised to be a good start for students to pay attention towards the importance of career counselling right from the early stage of education in high schools.
The test comes at the right time. Students who are deciding on the career options need to understand their capabilities and work on skill development to cope up with emerging challenges brought about by evolving Human Resource requirements of Corporates. The real responsibility lies with the academia and the parents alike to focus on developing non-academic skills as well among students.
This can be done by having a professional system to guide students from Classes IX to XII towards the right kind of programmes to choose from. Students and parents must realise that even after getting into college the overall personality matters to get that desired job. The test will help the parents and students to sit up and take notice.
The writer is Jaideep Gupta, CEO, Univariety