Exit Examination May Become Mandatory for Engineers to Test Employability

As per reports, engineering students studying in government, as well as private institutions may soon have to appear for a mandatory exit exam in the final year. The examination will set a benchmark for the students in terms of their employability, as the government is planning to share their scores with prospective employers.

The government is proposing to test the students' “attainment levels” through this examination since they are concerned about the quality of engineering students graduating every year. The issue will come up for discussion at a meeting of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) next week.

The proposed test is due to the feedback received the government about skewed standards of the country’s engineering education, which produces about seven lakh students annually from over 3,000 registered technical institutes. The data shows that only 20% to 30% of the students get a decent job. The low employability is attributed as much to the lack of requisite skills as to the falling demand from the industry.

A source from the HRD Ministry said that the examination will be conducted to check the student's aptitude, critical thinking, and skills and not just theory. This will also give a feedback on the teaching standards of the institutes. He added that based on this feedback, they will be able to suggest improvement measures to the institute and also identify colleges which require teaching training.

As per sources, a committee has proposed that the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) examination should be made mandatory for all the students passing out of these engineering institutes. The source also mentioned that it will help assess the standards of education in each institution, helping them make changes accordingly.

GATE is an all-India examination that primarily tests the comprehensive understanding of various undergraduate subjects in engineering and science. It is conducted jointly by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The GATE scores are usually used by IITs for admission to M.Tech.