There had been many instances in the last year where the Indian Institutes of Technology was in the news for the wrong reasons. One of the main issues was the commercialization of the degree obtained from the IITs. Students want to get admission for various courses in the IITs to land a job in top tier companies. The other side of this scenario is that in the present day, the highest paid jobs are offered to the students who pursue MBA from the Indian Institute of Management.

IIT graduates focus on managerial jobs with handsome pay

More and more students every year from IIT’s are focusing on a management career and as a consequence these graduates are focussing on cracking the CAT exam and thus get into IIMs. Thus they get into jobs where the kind of training they receive from the IITs is no use. Once they complete their MBA programme from any of the IIMs they take up managerial jobs in any of the leading Multinational companies or financial institutions. The important point to be considered here is, the use of an engineering degree in a financial organization. The engineering degree does not have any use in any of the financial organizations.

IIT degree - More of a decoration?

The engineering degree from an IIT becomes just a decoration in the resume, more precisely a status symbol. In India people often associate degrees to well paying jobs. They never take into consideration the knowledge that the engineering course imparts. For instance, we have engineers who have specialized in Mechanical and Civil engineering working with leading software companies. They do not work in the field of their specialization and what they care for is the handsome pay they receive from such jobs.

Need for focusing on Inventions

Professor Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Nobel laureate in a recent talk said that the IIT graduates should not be satisfied with corporate jobs. He says that the IIT graduates should focus on inventing revolutionary technologies that can benefit human beings and sources of energies and technologies that can save lives.

Reasons behind graduates going for corporate jobs

There are two important reasons which have resulted in the current trend of IITians going after corporate jobs. The first one is the method of teaching that is adopted by the Indian teachers; where the teaching does not invoke curiosity in the minds of the students. As a result students are not interested to pursue a career in the field of research and innovation. The other reason is that the graduates from IITs consider corporate jobs which offers handsome salary packages are the best options. Two to three decades back, these issues were never relevant to be discussed as majority of the IIT graduates were going to the United States or Canada for higher education and securing a job in various fields. This does not mean that all of the IIT graduates were behind science and engineering research. Some of them opted for higher education in management from leading universities such as Harvard or Kellogg and they joined corporate sector.

Information and Communication Technology revolution

The Information and Communication Technology revolution which occurred in the last two decades proved too be a great blessing to not only the IIT graduates, but also to other engineering and computer graduates from other institutions and deemed universities too. As a result, finding a job in the US became an easy affair. This was the case in India too, where the Information and Communication Technology and the manufacturing industries were on the path of development. In the developed western countries, talented Indian graduates formed the essence of the of the technology industry. In the technology industry in the west innovation is the key to survival. But later in the beginning of the 21st century, few factors made the Indians to start thinking in a different way. The recession in the western economies resulted in the decline of job opportunities and the westerners started to think that the Indian graduates are intruding into their job space. This led to rise of social tensions which continue even today. As a result Indians holding top positions in the western companies started to come back to India and this became a boon for the developing Indian industry in different fields.

The demand for professionals experienced in high end technologies

Those professionals who have experience in high end technology industries in developed economies are of great demand and all the countries are desperately looking for such professionals. On the other hand in India, all the industries are still following the principle of demand and supply without paying any attention to innovation. Only a handful of industries in India are focusing on innovation which includes the automobile industry. But this is not at all sufficient for a huge country like India. We Indians are not focusing on innovation in important fields such as agriculture, manufacturing and many other industries which can make huge impact on human lives. The service sector in India and the corporate sector in India offer handsome packages to graduates from IITs and IIMs and the graduates find such opportunities as worth pursuing.

It is high time that the Indian industry realize that meeting challenges in the future will need meaningful research and development at both the fundamental and application level. This can be made possible only if the industries take initiative to start cooperating with the Indian Institutes of Technology and other universities across India to focus on research and development by modifying the curriculum which is currently based on acquiring theoretical knowledge. Students from IITs and other Universities should be allowed to take up internship in different organizations so that they can understand the applications of the theory they learn in classrooms with hands on experience. Also this will pave way for meaningful research as it will help the students to understand the needs of the organizations in terms of areas that require improvement. Collaboration between IITs and the Indian industry is very essential to bring meaningful changes in the trend which drives engineering graduates towards unrelated fields.