These are the findings of the India Skills Report 2019 prepared by Wheebox, People Strong and CII in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, All India Council for Technical Education and the Association of Indian Universities. The report cites that over 57 percent of engineering graduates are employable as against only 36 percent of MBA graduates showing a continuous decline of third time in a row in the hiring of MBA graduates.
Engineering gained more than 14 percent in the employable category compared to 2018 whereas MBA graduates registered a drop of 3 percent. The mushrooming of management institutes in the country without adequate quality control has been suggested as a key reason for the decline in the quality of MBA education. Additionally, Bachelor of Pharmacy graduates fared the worst with a 12 percent decrease in employability compared to last year.
On a positive note, the overall employability score has continued to see an increase since 2014, with a rise from 45.6 percent to 47.8 percent since last year alone. Female employability rate has shown an extremely healthy growth of 46 percent compared to 2018.
The top 10 states in employability were found to be:
- Andhra Pradesh
- West Bengal
- Delhi
- Rajasthan
- Uttar Pradesh
- Haryana
- Karnataka
- Telangana
- Maharastra
- Tamil Nadu
Notably, Rajasthan and Haryana made it to the top 10 for the first time. Haryana’s entry on the list has been attributed to a number of government initiatives in vocational and technical education across the state. For instance, in the last academic year, 94 percent of eligible students from government polytechnics and engineering colleges found employment in various MNCs and other organisations or continued to pursue higher educational programs. All government institutes in Haryana had been divided into six clusters with a centralised training and placement cell within a three-layer support system at institute, cluster and state level.
Additionally, establishment of Centres of Excellence to impart specialised training to diploma and degree engineering students has been another key step in employability in the state seeing a quantum leap.
The report also finds that there has been a rise in employability in Tier 2 and 3 cities. Guntur and Visakhapatnam entered the list of top ten cities after a gap of two years whereas Thane and Nashik from Maharashtra were the newcomers on the list.
