India&#8217;s Obsession with STEM is Creating a Generation of Jobless Graduates
A CSET report on the Global Distribution of STEM Graduates reveals that 34% of all graduates in India come from STEM fields. Though the figure is lower than Malaysia (43.5%) and Tunisia (37.9%), when we compare the percentage of the total population of graduates in India, the number of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates is exorbitantly higher when compared to others. Register for Free Workshop: RAG & Fine Tuning in GenAI > The question is: where do all these STEM graduates go? Jose Crespo, a hardware design engineer, explored the same question in his LinkedIn post. “INDIA IS NVIDIA PRODUCING STEM GRADUATES,” he claimed. India Alone Produces Enough STEM Graduates for the World In the USA and Europe, student loans have become so burdensome that they can financially cripple an average successful graduate even before their career begins. Pursuing a degree in a STEM field seems less practical given that only one in every two graduates finds employment in a related job. “India alone produces enough STEM graduates every year to meet the needs of Europe and the USA in IT-related fields, including niche areas,” said Crespo. The number of graduates from India are almost enough to fill the seats of top jobs in the US. That is probably also why a lot of graduates from India aim to settle abroad and work there. However, despite producing around 5-10 million STEM graduates annually, India as a populated developing country has arguably not seen much economic improvement and is running out of skilled software engineers. Instead, the country faces an oversupply of graduates, with the most-talented ones leaving for developed nations. For example, there are a lot more than 100k job openings in the Indian IT sector which are still vacant. The reason is that many of the graduates do not want to join these companies because of very little salary. Moreover, these companies demand very high skills from the graduates for miniscule salaries. Education to be Blamed? One of the core issues that people point out is India having a poor higher education system. But the number of highly talented Indians in mathematics, engineering, and IT is remarkably high, even though a large portion of them are highly “unemployable”. Recent discussions on X narrate stories of how many graduates from colleges do not have the basic coding skills to do the jobs. Universities like Stanford, Harvard, and other major institutions in the US, offer a much more hands-on approach towards teaching, while also opening up major possibilities when it comes to jobs with great paychecks. This is driving many young Indians to seek education and careers abroad, which is bad news for India. Additionally, STEM programs in the US and other developed countries are superior due to their strong industry-academia-government linkages, making their research cutting-edge and practical. While there are several great institutions in India, such as IITs and NITs, only a handful of top students are able to get into them. The rest, with big pockets, find it useful to study abroad and settle there. The interesting part is that countries like the US require only a small fraction of these graduates to get their job done. This has resulted in an oversupply of STEM graduates in India who harbour the US and European dreams, seeking higher salaries but cannot. Paying Mediocrity? “It is true that mediocrity is still sizable in the Indian tech world, but in the meantime, top tech centres and places like Bangalore can compete without a problem with the best brains of the USA tech elite engineers, let alone Europe,” agreed Crespo. On the other hand, there is absolutely no doubt about the skill shortage in India. Some people argue that given the skillset of several graduates, an INR 3.4 LPA package is decent enough at an Indian IT. Amit Sheth, chair and founding director of the AIISC also joined in on the discussion and said that even though the point is thought provoking, there are various examples of Indians building in India such as Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal. Ketharaman Swaminathan, founder of GTM360, says that one of the reasons is that it is very difficult for India to harness the STEM talent and encourage them to stay in India because of the lower per capita income. However, many believe that US universities and tech-related entities are mediocre and overpriced, lagging behind the excellence of top Indian tech centres. Only the top 1-5% of US tech centres are irreplaceable, while the rest could be supplanted by thousands of graduates from India’s top universities and colleges. Crespo said that the reason this surplus of graduates has not translated into economic growth is that a developing country like India cannot create tech, engineering, and high-business entrepreneurs simply by producing a large number of STEM graduates. Moreover, the mindset of most Indian graduates leans towards seeking jobs rather than becoming tech or engineering entrepreneurs. Indian engineers, both in software and hardware, are exceptionally talented and available in large numbers, yet they are significantly more affordable. Moreover, paying mediocre US developers several times more than highly capable Indian engineers, who earn 4-5 times less, makes little sense. Though India is seeing an increase in talent retention, it seems to be a surplus of underskilled STEM graduates. Since everyone is now basically becoming a developer, the demand for high-skilled software engineers is increasing.
The number of STEM graduates from India are almost enough to fill the seats of top jobs in the US and Europe.
The number of STEM graduates from India are almost enough to fill the seats of top jobs in the US and Europe.
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Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.