A fresh biotech graduate from IIT-Kharagpur is overly elated at the prospect of earning more than half a lakh every month at a reputed software firm; Saurabh Kumar of NIT Durgapur, a first year undergraduate in computer science says that he would be more than happy if he is snapped up by NTPC or SAIL during campus placements. But why should that be so? A biotech graduate witha software career, a computer engineering undergraduate cherishing prospects of joining an electrical plant - isn't this a harbinger of things going haywire in the next decade or so with Indian students seeking lucrative jobs in 'safe' avenues?

Let's analyse this - if one is not convinced of the employment prospects of one's chosen field, then why does he/she spend so much time in studying the subject or stream at college? If the entire engineering fraternity in our country is so confident about the recruiting companies' training periods, then why go to college at all? CSE to electrical, electronics to software, biotech to information technology - the shuffles are mind boggling, and even more alarming is the tremendous ease with which students , their parents and the employers accept such swift loyalty shifts these days! The prevailing mindset is this: go to school, get into a reputed engineering college and then take up a job that offers you the most handsome pay-package. After sweating it out for four long years, a student mindlessly chooses to throw every shred of interest and experience of his branch of engineering just to please the employers. Doesn't this reek of a dysfunction in our engineering colleges?

Be it the best college or the worst, the students have the same mentality before joining it - aim for the best job on offer at the campus placement. If six months of rigorous training under prospective employers can teach the hitherto undergraduates how to make a decent living, then why do we really break our heads on the kind of education we get in school and then in college?

Are Indians really being astute by doing this? Look around you: it is an open secret that the overwhelming majority in our engineering colleges are actually what economists call ‘disguised unemployed’, doing nothing but having fun at their parents’ expense, sleeping, partying, chatting on Facebook, idling at cinemas and shopping malls, putting people’s lives at risk zooming about on snazzy bikes, having silly affairs, experimenting with drugs, waiting to get married off or for ‘campus recruitment’ into the kind of jobs which, as I said before, don’t really need any real education beyond class 12.

All they get from their long ‘education’ is ingrained laziness, irresponsibility and swollen egos, which actually makes it tough for them to adjust to the rigours of working life.

Readers should ponder over this : if the tag of a particular engineering college is more important than the genuine interest of the student in a particular venture, then the entire country would soon become a land of ugly morons, wasting entire lives in search of a 'good job'! Think: if these soon-to-be engineers had been working since their mid-teens in however humble a capacity, they would have been contributing something to the family fund as much as to the gross national product; instead, they are allowed to live as high-expense parasites till their mid-twenties and then going all out to become a good-job seeker. Now, who gains from that?