We remember the time when most of Pakistani parents would aspire to be parents of future doctors, engineers and military personnel. The second choice would be opportunities afforded by CSS. The age of computers came and it added another option but never with the allure of the above. Those originally sought after professions still remain the aspiration for millions and their parents.
Being an engineer, and an only son to two doctors, I am part of a family apparently counted the first two choices as the only reasonable choices. And similarly, I am convinced that while liberal arts, journalism, economics, pure sciences and other professions are more acceptable now than ever before, the core choice of most Pakistani parent has not changed much.
This attitude and the limitations of our educational system has posed a number of dilemmas for individuals and created social problems and challenges for the Pakistani society. I have always tried to convince people who think of working without going through formal higher education to reconsider, but privately I have my doubts about the utility of this advice. And these doubts arise from a major stress factor that threatens our society today, unemployment of the highly educated. Doctors and engineers included.
Being an Engineer I would venture to share my opinion on what ails this professional qualification. Our engineering universities, except for the top few, have turned into mass producers of degree holding individuals who have little chance of securing a decent job at the initial stages. And while lack of jobs can also be attributed to the present economic conditions it’s also a result of not understanding the significance of the numbers that our economy can absorb, even in better days.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of engineering institutes in the country, Private Sector and Government Sector. The Government Sector includes universities such as the UETs (Lahore, Peshawar, Taxila, Faisalabad, Mehran), Punjab University, NED Karachi, Bahauddin Zakaria University and many more. The Private sector, which has noticeably ballooned in the recent past, includes GIKI, NUST, FAST, LUMS, University of Central Punjab, University of Lahore etc. Four of the biggest engineering institutions of the country, UET Lahore, GIKI, NUST, and NED are the most prestigious. UET produces around 1400 Engineers (BSc) every year. NUST and NED can be estimated to produce a similar number and GIKI churns out about 500.
This takes the outflow of these four institutions to be around 4700. Let’s assume that all of the other institutions produce around 10,000 professionals on top of these and this takes the number to around 15,000, minimum, every year. The next question is what do they do after they have graduated and the problem begins at this very moment. The end of graduation divides these young individuals into two broad spectrums,
1. Those who want to work in the industry
2. Those who want to seek further education
It is important to mention that this division is affected by the economic strata to which these engineers belong to. Those from relatively better economic background choosing to study further. Most of those wanting to serve in the industry immediately after graduating would be those who are in some way economically challenged. And then within these Engineering, Electrical and Mechanical engineers have the best chances of securing a decent first job. And for the other graduates in less desired Engineering fields it’s a real dog fight. This poses the first dilemma.
To further complicate matters or the engineering trades that are called traditional, e.g. Electrical and Mechanical, while there are jobs but the competition is extremely tough. For the nontraditional trades such as Environmental Engineering and Metallurgy, there are not many jobs to begin with. This leads to a very healthy situation. As the top spots fill out engineers begin to settle for lesser and lesser than they aimed until most of them would start off with jobs that are only remotely linked with what they have been trained for. But even after such compromises there would always be a huge number of Engineering graduates left unemployed.
It’s a never ending sad story. The number of engineers our institutions are producing grows each year with fewer jobs to compete for. This situation is likely to continue till the present economic recession remains and the security situation does not improve. Add to all this the cost cutting measures that even industrial giants are taking today and we have a very dire challenge facing us.
So what are we left with?
We are left with thousands of individual graduates, unemployed or barely employed with no silver lining in their dark skies. They have run out of ideas and plans and with an aim of surviving only. One would have thought, or wished, that our government would somehow come up with policies to tackle this challenge. How very naïve of us to think like this !!
Every year, our government grants more and more institutions the right to grant engineering degrees. I cannot claim that these universities are not assessed for infrastructure and other prerequisites, but I have witnessed 5 room “universities” claiming of awarding “Engineering” degrees. The fact that despite the huge increase in the number of engineering institutions today each one of them is full to its brim is a proof that even today most young people automatically choose this profession to study without assessing the future prospects.
Year after year we put on the line the future of some of our brightest minds by not planning properly, as a state our educational policies. These individuals have the potential of making a huge difference if they are guided properly at the beginning of the higher education stage.
Its high time that the government and the political parties focus on correcting our educational policies. In this information age Human Resources are a countries most important asset. We cannot afford, as a state and society, to treat it in such a callous manner.
