AICTE Proposes 'Exit Exam' for Engineering Graduates to Assess Employability of Student

AICTE is working on a proposal that will make it mandatory for graduating engineers to appear for an 'Exit Exam' that will assess their employability skills. This exam will be mandatory for students in their final year of B. Tech. Basis the Exit Exam score, the employability of the students will be determined, because the government intends to share this information with their prospective employers. Given the nature of this exam, it will be implemented in both government and private engineering schools in India and the government will share the scores of the exam with prospective employers.

Aim behind the proposal to conduct 'Exit Exams' in B. Tech colleges:

Skewed standards of India’s engineering education
Improve Employability: Only 20% - 30% of engineering graduates in India are able to get a job, in spite of the fact that roughly, seven lakh engineering students graduate annually from across 3,000 registered technical institutes (approximately)
Fix the lack of requisite skill set amongst engineering graduates to make them job ready
Even though students will be awarded with an engineering degree from their respective colleges regardless of their performance in the exit exam, it will, however, be mandatory for students to give the Exit exam (unlike GATE).

Aim behind the proposal to conduct 'Exit Exams' in B. Tech colleges:

Skewed standards of India’s engineering education
Improve Employability: Only 20% - 30% of engineering graduates in India are able to get a job, in spite of the fact that roughly, seven lakh engineering students graduate annually from across 3,000 registered technical institutes (approximately)
Fix the lack of requisite skill set amongst engineering graduates to make them job ready

This landmark proposal has been in the offing for a while now. With growing questions on the credibility of engineers passing out of engineering colleges in India every year, this exit exam will test their ‘attainment levels’, said a spokesperson from AICTE.

Conducting the Exit Exam for engineering graduates will serve a dual motive:

AICTE can then check the engineering student’s skills, aptitude, critical thinking, besides theory
Will give AICTE a feedback on the standards & teaching methodology of engineering institutes in India
AICTE will be able to come up with remedial measures for the betterment of the education quality in each of these institutes like teacher training etc.

The intention to better the education standards is so motivated that a committee has even suggested making GATE exam mandatory for passing out of engineering institutes! GATE otherwise is conducted for admission to M. Tech courses in the Indian Institutes of Technology by Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore & seven IIT’s across India.

He further confirmed that this decision is still at a discussion level at present and will be taken up for discussion at a meeting of the AICTE later in January 2017. As of now 2018, there is no update on the status of this proposal. However, recently, AICTE received a shock when a fake news on scrapping of 75% mandatory attendance in B. Tech colleges in India was doing the rounds.