A Critical Study of Employability of Pass out of Professional Institutes in Madhya Pradesh | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

The current research attempts to analyze and compare the employability of the undergraduates and recent pass out engineering students across Madhya Pradesh with reference to the specific & generic skill level required in industry. The analysis is based on sample response from regional, national, global employers and engineering graduates’ respondents drawn from Bhopal, Jabalpur & Vidisha region of Madhya Pradesh. The data was collected through a questionnaire survey in which thirteen attributes of general skills and fourteen attributes of specific skills were measured; using five point scale based on their importance levels. The study intends to analyze and measure the levels of employability and the variation there in as per gender, type of institute (Government or private), medium of schooling & city, and the expected employability level of the employers. The sample from students studying in final year & recent pass out group reveals that the employability of engineering graduates of M.P. is lower than the score required in industry. This low level of employability is seen on account of both generic skills & specific skills. This indicates that despite of increase in numbers of engineering colleges & efforts to increase the employability, the engineering graduate lacks in employability skills. The findings suggests that engineering institutes, should focus to improve the skill set of graduates, focus on the assessments and curricula in analyzing and solving engineering problems, as well as increased creativity and interact more with Industries to understand the particular demand for skills in that region and sector. It can be further enriched with the involvement of Industry in academics. After classifying all skills by factor analysis, it is found that the soft skills are very important specifically the communication skill. The analysis also confirms that the male and female respondent does not differ significantly on account of employability. Tools used for analysis are reliability test, factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha test, mean score, standard deviation, t-test analysis, ANOVA and other statistical tools. The result of analysis reveals the low level of employability skills among the engineering undergraduates & pass-outs of M.P.