what your child should study

I keep meeting parents across India who are adamant to push their child (specially the fated male child) into engineering as a ‘well respected’ and ‘well paid’ job option! Though I know that the ‘data’ and reality-mapping is entirely unimpressive when it comes to prevailing mindsets of Indian parents+ family members, but still, here’s  a humble effort to save few children from being robotized.

According to the HRD ministry, India has 6,214 engineering and technology institutions. Around 1.5 million engineers are released into the job market every year. Its interesting to note that USA produces around 1 lakh Engineers per year for a $ 19 Trillion economy whereas, India produces 15 lakhs Engineers for a $ 3 Trillion Economy! Over it, the education, imparted in these engineering colleges are neither contemporary (I have been in some of these colleges where the professors still use the decade old note to teach) nor industry oriented. In recent time, the highest recruiter of engineers (after the manufacturing sector) was the IT industry (I even know many agricultural engineers joining in IT company) contributing to only 5% of the GDP. But the recent saturation of IT industry brought in newer challenges. Over it, a study shows 95 per cent of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs! As per another study only 3 per cent have suitable skills to be employed in software or product market, and only 7 per cent can handle core engineering tasks! 97% engineering students cannot speak English and 43% cannot write correct English!  One expert argued “If we leave aside the top 100–200 colleges, most fresh engineers have no idea of what they studied. Ask a fresh mechanical engineer, can s/he design a simple frame?”… I agree with him.

As per a recently circulated note, in the sectoral composition of Indian economy, most of the sectors do not need engineers. Tourism is 10% of the GDP, does not require core engineers. Financial sector, Trade, Hotels and Restaurants do not require engineers. Requirement of engineers in Health, education, Agriculture is also negligible. Hence, more than 50% of the GDP has no role for Engineers!

Then, what is required anyway? The new research from Nesta, in partnership with the Creative Industries Council, reveals creative industries across the UK are driving local and national economic growth, identifying that local economies have grown their creative industries employment by an average of 11 per cent, twice as fast as other sectors (where local economies experienced, on average, 5.5 per cent of growth). Based on its new research, Nesta estimates there were 162,000 new employees in the UK creative industries between 2011-2014 and 2015-16. If the creative industries keep growing at the same pace, 900,000 new creative industries jobs could be created between 2013 and 2030. This nears Nesta’s goal of one million new creative jobs by 2030, as set in its 2015 report The Creative Economy and the Future of Employment. This amount could total 1,000 new creative industries jobs a week, important for the UK workforce and economy because creative jobs are highly skilled, could contribute to productivity growth and are resilient to automation. Creative industry is booming, across the world!

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak already mentioned that Indians measure success with academic excellence and a good job, but lack creativity. I agree with him! The straight jacketed education system indeed killed creativity of this nation. Hence, let your child explore, remain creative and be expressive. The future is brighter if the child can think and imagine, rather than ‘repeat and rewind’.