Over the span of one, there has been a rise in demand of engineering and tech courses. It was seen that the rise was 390 per cent.
WHAT HAS CHANGED
Number of colleges permitted by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) which offered undergraduate and postgraduate engineering and technology courses rose from 1,503 in 2006-07 to 6,472 in 2016-17.
Talking of the total intake capacity in these colleges at both levels during this period rose from 6,11,487 to 29,98,298, a rise of 390 per cent.
Demand also remains strong for Science related programmes, despite the national trend, and also for computing and business programmes. The new science specialisations in Sport & Exercise Science and Public Health Nutrition are addressing new market.
Also the growth in self-employment in the engineering sector has been driven disproportionately by women. The gender imbalance remains stark: 3.2 per cent of engineering contractors are women (1,784) compared to 2.4 per cent in 2015 (800), but that’s inn other fields as well.
WHAT HAS NOT CHANGED
Number of students enrolled in other AICTE-approved courses, including management, has not seen a rise in the last five years.
In 2012-13, there were 6,141 institutes offering non-engineering technical courses like architecture, hotel management, pharmacy and town-planning.
This number dipped to 5,586 in 2016-17.
Similarly, the number of intake capacity at these institutes went down from 7,63,777 in 2012-13 to 7,03,416 in 2016-17, a reduction of 7.9 per cent.
WHAT DRIVES THESE FIGURES
The reduction in job numbers in this market is due to slow growth and/or the decline of numbers needed for the manufacturing sector. That being said, it predicts that more companies and manufacturers will cease to rely on in-house engineers.
On the plus side, technological innovation will likely drive the demand for more numbers of electrical engineers in the R&D sector, paving way to rise in number of educational courses in respective field.
