Class 7 students better than 50% of India's engineers: survey

India may be the biggest producer of engineering graduates across the world, but about half the number can't match Class 7 students of the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) when it comes to English grammar skills.

Updated on: Jul 25, 2012, 24:47:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India may be the biggest producer of engineering graduates across the world, but about half the number can't match Class 7 students of the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) when it comes to English grammar skills.

Nasscom, an IT industry body, pointed out this problem in 2011, when it stated that almost 50% of the engineers in India were unemployable. Only a meagre 25% of the graduates were found worthy of employment without in-house training.

An evaluation of the Aspiring Minds Computer Aptitude Test (ACMAT) on 55,000 engineering graduates — held in 2011 — has further accentuated this issue. Around half the engineering students were unable to differentiate between the words ‘had’ and ‘have’ in the context of a simple sentence. One-third were unable to answer entry-level math questions.

“Their poor English and Math skills indicate low learning levels,” said Himanshu Aggarwal, an IIT-Delhi alumnus who co-founded Aspiring Minds.

SS Mantha, chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), does not agree. Though he expressed concern, Mantha said the sample size of 55,000 candidates was too small to arrive at a definite conclusion. Around 7,50,000 engineers had graduated in 2011.

The study showed that 47% were unable to write grammatically correct sentences, less than 48% understood moderately sophisticated words, and 52% were not even acquainted with simple English terms.

Hope, however, is on the horizon. Dilip Chenoy, managing director of the National Skill Development Corporation, said the government has joined hands with the industry to resolve the issue.

Sample questions:

Q. There is a dearth of woman doctor in our state. We may have to recruit some from other states.
Only 47% of engineering graduates were able to select the correct answer women doctors.

Q Did you _______ cereal for breakfast.
Only 50% of the students were able to give the correct answer – have.

Main findings of the study

* More than 25% engineers do not even possess the English comprehension skills required to understand engineering school curriculum.

* Only 57% engineers can write grammatically correct sentences in English.

* Less than 48% engineers understand moderately sophisticated words of English.

* More than half of all engineers (52%) would not be fluent in a majority of words that are used with regular frequency at the workplace.

* Interestingly not more than 30% of engineering students, who undergo stress and exhaustion while preparing for entrance exams, were acquainted with the word “exhaust”.

* Around 50% engineers possess grammar skills no better than a class VII student.

Sample size: 55,000 engineers out of 1,20,000 who appeared for AMCAT in 2011.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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