Thought leaders from IEEE are asking 'Is engineering innovation in danger?' as diminishing engineering talent is becoming a growing concern around the globe.
Across North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan, the numbers of students attracted to engineering and computer science are declining.
In India, while the country produces over 600,000 engineers from top-tier and renowned institutions every year, there are numerous second- and third-tier engineering graduates who have not received the same quality and caliber of engineering education.
According to a recent Global Institute study on the emerging global labour market, India produces a large number of engineering graduates every year, but multinational companies find that just 25 per cent of them are employable. The crux of the problem, according to the study, lies in the overall quality of India's educational system, exacerbated by the lack of consistent standards across institutions, apart from the top universities.
"India's engineering colleges possess negligible infrastructure, for example, the shortage of faculty in computer science/IT, overlapping courses and lack of specialisation among others. The implementation of the curriculum—for degree programmes in computing across Indian engineering colleges – tendsÿto be poor and lacks creativity and deep dive into specific topics of interests. Moreover, the absence of trained qualified engineers, the lack of trained faculty and the dismal state spending on research and development in higher education add to India's rising concern of creating talent not competent to be hired by foreign companies," said Dr. Muriyankulangara V Ananthakrishnan, senior member and chairman of the IEEE Computer Society of the Mumbai Section.
IEEE is calling to action the entire industry to come together to create a coordinated, multi-year campaign to deliver the message that engineers contribute a lot to society.
As part of IEEE's India Initiative, the IEEE Computer Society recently announced it would be extending its certification programme for software proficiency to Indian technical institutions, especially the faculty and students of computer science, software engineering, IT and software applications.
The certification will recognise software skills at two levels: Certified Software Development Associate (CSDA) and Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP). Vellore Institute of Technology, recently became the first Indian university to sign an agreement to offer the CSDA certification to its students and entry-level software engineers.
The CSDA, for entry-level software developers, is intended to provide graduating computer science and software engineering students their first credential towards a firm career foundation as a software development practitioner. The CSDP certification is targeted towards mid-career software professionals. The CSDA and the CSDP are the first two certifications that conform to the newly-released ISO/IEC 24773 standard, which stipulates methods of certifying software engineering professionals worldwide. The basis of both certifications is the Computer Society's Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK).
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