Sayan Banerjee dreams of studying civil engineering. The Class XII student of South Point School hates being tied to a workstation for hours, crunching numbers. He would rather design bridges, roads and travel. His choice is rare, especially post-pandemic, when most students are making a beeline for computer science and engineering and other related engineering streams — such as electronics and communications engineering — that would land them a cushy job in the information technology or IT sector.

Around 80 per cent students studying core engineering subjects such as electrical, mechanical, civil, etc. in different colleges are brushing up their programming and coding skills for placement interviews. The campus placements are increasingly becoming testing grounds for students’ programming skills. Nobody is complaining though, considering few industries can match the salary of IT biggies.

Only a handful from core engineering now prepare for GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) and opt for jobs in public sector undertakings, postings of which are few and far in between. They would rather go for a management degree to improve their chances in the job market.

Fourth-year student of the Institute of Engineering and Management (IEM), Salt Lake, Calcutta, Pushpak Singh is not ready to join this bandwagon. The mechanical engineer-in-the-making is preparing for his GATE but admits that most of his classmates will ultimately be absorbed into IT. “It’s the IT companies that usually come to our campus for recruitment. Fewer companies from other sectors are head hunting now,” he says.

IT has ruled the careers of engineering students for a while now. In the new normal, options for core engineering students have been further narrowed down. In response, most private colleges have reduced the number of seats allotted to core engineering subjects.

Sanghamitra Poddar, head of the department of student affairs and alumni relations at IEM, says they have reduced the number of seats of their core streams by almost 50 per cent. “IT is easy employment. It pays well too,” she adds.

According to Taranjit Singh, managing director of the JIS Group, while the eight engineering colleges of the group offer over 4,000 seats for computer science, IT, MCA and BCA, the number of seats for core subjects has been reduced to 2,100, which is a 20 per cent reduction from the scenario a few years ago.

“Computer science is not a single stream any more. Related branches such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, data science, block chain, Internet of Things have evolved and so have the job opportunities in these areas. Even core students have to brush up their digital, programming and coding knowledge to stay afloat,” says Singh. The comforts of working from home, possibility of on-site postings in foreign countries and the inclusive nature of the industry is making it a huge draw.

Even students from general streams are headed in the same direction. “Our boys and girls from geology, statistics, chemistry and economics often get absorbed in data analytics firms. Data handling is a huge part of research too. Only the very committed go for higher studies these days,” says Nilanjan Dasgupta, a professor in the department of geology at Presidency University.

IT, with its gender equality policies, has especially been a boon for women engineers. Says Indraneel Ganguly, a visiting faculty at management institutes and the co-founder of the Bangalore based-training and recruiting firm Pragmatica Consultants, “There is a feeling among employers that women engineers don’t fit in factories. The odd hours and work environment may not be conducive to them. The unwritten bias has left women professionals with no choice but to opt for IT and related fields, even if their interest and specialisation lie elsewhere.”

The syllabus for engineering students had been changing for a while, and the importance shifting to computer languages. Many colleges have answered the clarion call and introduced new streams. Neelak Dasgupta, a first-year student at SRM University, Chennai, considers himself lucky to have been selected for artificial intelligence. “We are the first batch for this new stream of engineering. I am so glad I could study the subject I had always wanted to. AI is the next big thing, but India is waking up to it slowly. Schools should also introduce it,” says the coder.

As IT gets more and more attractive, academicians claim that its biggest draw is still the salary. Says an assistant professor at the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, in Ranchi, Jharkhand, who does not want to be identified, “Where are the jobs in other sectors?” He continues, “Look at the automobile industry. There aren’t many government jobs up for grabs. Students study engineering to get high-paying jobs. Their education in top-notch colleges is expensive. But then few companies are in a position to pay them well outside IT. People are actually losing jobs elsewhere.”