There are few takers for engineering postgraduates these days. The slowdown in the economy has dampened prospects in manufacturing so much so that the industry is shy about hiring them. Another major attraction was academics. In fact, many engineering graduates did master's with an eye on teaching jobs. There was indeed a time when a master's degree assured one a teaching job. That too has changed.

The tide turned against PGs when engineering colleges spotted an opportunity in the shortage of qualified hands to teach and lobbied with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to liberalise norms to start post graduate courses. In less than a decade, the shortage became a surplus. If just about a thousand PG seats were on offer a decade ago, by 2012 the number of seats had risen to 13,000.

Colleges that once complained of lack of eligible candidates for faculty recruitment now talk about a glut in applications. "Apart from in civil and mechanical engineering disciplines, there are too many applicants in other branches for lecturer's posts," says V Lakshmi Prabha, principal, Government College of Technology (GCT).

A few academics TOI spoke to mirror her view. When jobs prospects in the IT sector started to decline, many engineering students started to look beyond graduation. Work in IT firms have become more demanding and many workers, especially those involved in back office operations, began to explore other options. Several of them, especially women, started enrolling for post graduation in the hope of landing a teaching job. The lure of getting a teaching job, which offer a pay packet comparable to a corporate job and the flexible working hours, was what made most of them to opt for post graduation, says Lakshmi Prabha. Soon, there were too many applicants for teaching jobs.

"If a few years back, a college struggled to get a single applicant for a teaching post, now we get 50 to 100 applications of ME graduates," adds T D Eswaramoorthy, general secretary of Coimbatore-based Engineering Colleges Affiliated under Anna University. This, according to him, has helped improve the quality of faculties.

But why is it that businesses prefer engineering graduates to PGs?

R Ramachandran, president of Coimbatore District Small Industries Association (CODISSIA), says training a post-graduate is a difficult job. "Most of the post-graduates lack floor training. This makes it difficult on the party of industries to train them. So most of the industries are not interested to recruit post-graduates," he says. Moreover, ME graduates should be paid more than a BE, which again makes it unattractive to recruit a post-graduate. Moreover, there is a perception that those who go for PG are those who did not have other options after their graduation, he said.

An HR person from a leading IT firm puts it bluntly. "Who needs to pay more for a person who is less competent? An undergraduate will do the same job for less salary. This rules out recruiting post-graduates," he says, on the condition of anonymity since he was not authorised to speak to the media. Though there are firms which do give preference for PG students, they are less in number, he adds.

The result is that many engineering post graduates are left in the lurch like S Rajendran (name changed), who completed his ME in Communication in 2012 from a Coimbatore college. "I had applied to many of the institutions and even to some firms. But till now I have been unable to get a job," he says.

Source : TOI