Reverse engineering: Govt to rope in industry to re-skill unemployable grads

Karnataka produced 2.37 lakh engineering graduates in the past five years, and nearly half of them were found unemployable.

Now, the department of IT&BT is taking steps to buck the trend by working backwards - getting the industry to train such graduates.

The department is gearing up to launch Yuva Yuga, an industry-led project where top companies will be roped in to provide the right set of skills to unemployable graduates in IT and related sectors. Between 2012 and 2016, a total of 3.88 lakh students enrolled into engineering and technology courses (BE/BTech) in Karnataka, of whom 2.37 lakh passed and only 1.31 lakh got placed, according to data from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

“Employability is a concern I have raised in many platforms. Karnataka generates the maximum number of engineers, so it is natural that more of them fall prey to unemployment,” IT & BT Minister Priyank Kharge said.

“We’re trying to see how we can work backwards with the industry and re-skill our graduates in emerging sectors. We hope to launch this in about a month’s time,” he said. Through Yuva Yuga, the government hopes to train 1.1 lakh youth in what Kharge says will be sector-specific. “We want to train graduates with curriculum designed by the industry. For example, one company will have its own curriculum, train graduates in an area of its need and absorb them thereafter. Those who get trained will receive certification endorsed both by the state government and the industry, which could further their employment prospects,” he explained.

The industry is changing such that graduates who do not have adequate skills in emerging sectors such as automation, Internet of Things, cloud computing and analytics will not find takers, according to R V College of Engineering principal K N Subramanya. “We have to wait and see if the slowdown in IT hiring will impact campus placements this year,” he said. Authorities are reaching out to several industry majors to come aboard Yuva Yuga. “Some half-a-dozen companies have already signed an agreement with us,” IT & BT Principal Secretary Gaurav Gupta said. “Gone are the days when plain vanilla engineering graduates were hired with a good salary,” he said.

In the long run, the government plans to make such training a part of the curriculum by way of add-on courses, Gupta said.

DH News Service