Hyderabad:
Andhra Pradesh has been sending thousands of engineers to the United States every year but thousands of engineering seats in the state have no takers.
A weak job market and dismal education standards has led to an exodus of engineers and students to head to other states and countries for education and employment.
Recent engineering graduate, Jagadeesh is planning to join a college in United States in the October session. He will be joining 26 students from his class of 120 students have already gone to the US.
'Lots of graduates here are engineers. So well-paid job is not easy to find. So earning MS or MBA will surely improve job prospects. And we can compete in the global market,' he says.
Hyderabad has been sending the maximum number of students, mostly engineers, for higher studies to the US.
According to a Brookings Institution report, between 2008 and 2012, Hyderabad topped in F1 visas 26,220 Mumbai 17294. Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune less than 10,000 students each
For the US, the foreign student inflow is an economic bonanza to capitalize on, that brought in more than $5 billion between 2008-2012, with students from Hyderabad and Mumbai accounting for $650 million.
One big reason for huge numbers from Hyderabad was that undivided Andhra Pradesh had 718 engineering colleges, offering 3.5 lakh engineering seats, the maximum number anywhere in the country.
But ironically, nearly one and a half lakh seats had no takers because hardly 25 per cent engineers land jobs.
Many blame this on a fee reimbursement scheme started by former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y. S.Rajasekhar Reddy, to help students who could not afford higher education but it turned into a huge scam.
Many colleges sprung up with poor teaching faculty and hardly any infrastructure. No wonder then that they churned out engineers who could not find employment in the market. Industry termed many of them as unemployable.
Even after the Telangana government refused recognition to 174 engineering colleges, nearly 70,000 engineering seats have gone empty in Telangana and in Andhra Pradesh.
L Venugopal Reddy, Chairperson, AP Council for Higher Education, sees this as a huge opportunity lost.
'Main gap is quality. Don't have teachers to teach, good labs to train, other infrastructure facilities. Several institutions don't have tie-up with industry. Not looking at requirement of industry.'
With global jobs beckoning, a missed opportunity for India has turned into an economic bonanza for the US, with Indian student inflow accounting for millions of dollars.