It was interesting to observe first-hand the admissions season in a pandemic year and see the perceptions of students, their parents, the bets they took, and what they thought the future held. Today’s parents need to understand that they are from a different generation — GenX — while the kids will be working in a Gen Z world.
Viewing the choices made by the students, no doubt influenced by their parents, the thinking seemed to be that India would be only an IT and computer sciences nation. But the reality is that for India to survive in this world it needs to be a massive manufacturing base. This is the only way we can feed jobs to millions of people. Agreed we are headed to an Industry 4.0 world where what can you do with a computer science degree will be pervasive but somebody would still have to make machines. Every computer, every mobile needs core engineering. Without power, the world will not run. Without mechanical engineering, there are no machines.
But looking at the way people were queuing up for the computers stream, it seemed as though they assumed this was the end of India as a manufacturing base. The emission standard BS VI or Bharat Stage VI leaps from BS-IV, that the auto industry is grappling with, also led to the thinking that the automobile industry will not be adding jobs. This caused an almost total boycott of mechanical and electrical branches by students while there was a rush for computer science, IT, and AI courses.
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