Emerging Trends

In today’s fast paced world, the only constant is change and adapting to those changes – the only way to stay on top! With rapid changes in technology, economy and society, industry demands are ever-changing and sticking to only traditional ways of teaching and traditional streams just won’t make the cut!

A NASSCOM report suggests that only 30-40 % of graduates from Indian technical education institutes are worth employing! Our students have the core content, but there is a need for increase in basic science, management, soft skills and emerging technologies to be incorporated in to the syllabus. Hence, even though India has some of the brightest minds in the world, our education system needs to radically transform to make our graduates employable. Following this report, the government was forced to look at the syllabus and rework it. The idea was to make the subjects more job-oriented for engineering students!

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) thus started working on its first version of model curriculum in 2017. After working on it for the past 4 years, and keeping in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 that emphasizes on the holistic development of students, it will finally be introducing the model curriculum soon.

The new curriculum will incorporate elements such as interdisciplinarity, academic bank of credits, flexible entry-exit options along with emerging areas of technology including AI, ML, Robotics, Quantum Computing, Data Sciences, Cyber Security etc. The implementation will be made possible through faculty development programs (FDPs) that AICTE keeps conducting from time to time. Students will be offered subjects such as Entrepreneurship, Industry 5.0, 5G Communication, Big Data, Software Defined Network, Quantum Computing and ML for Communication, giving them the option to expand their knowledge base and upskill for the future.

Following industry demands, many technical colleges across India are choosing to reset their offerings, closing down branches that do not have many takers and instead opting for other courses in the new, emerging areas. There is high demand for programs like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and institutes are filling up these seats faster than the core engineering branches. In the last 2 years alone, 11,000 mechanical engineering seats and 10,000 civil engineering seats have been done away with. In spite of the cut, many institutes have still been unable to fill all the seats in the traditional streams, whereas emerging courses are being lapped up. What needs to be kept in mind though is that we still need our core subjects but maybe with a twist! So, offering a lot of multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary combinations like machine learning and mechanical engineering, agriculture engineering and AI will be the way to move forward!

Having said that, although, data, technology and system driven industries and careers are at peak, the pandemic era has also opened up new venues! There has been new found but well-deserved interest in areas of 'self enhancement' and enrichment. Issues like physical health, mental well-being, indulgences, hobbies etc. have gained popularity. Some of the careers to look out for are medical diagnostics, testing, consultation, fitness instructors, physiotherapists, psychological coaches, nutrition, meditation practitioners, gaming, entertainment etc.

What we think?

I personally think that with so much stress and negativity in the world, there is a need for holistic success, which can only be achieved by creating a balance. Hence, focus on 'self-health' is surely going to take center stage along with careers in data and AI.