Our Prime Minister while delivering the speech at the presentation ceremony of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prizes in May 1998 in New Delhi lamented that our system allows only an inferior status to engineers.  He also mentioned that a large number of bright young people who get a degree in engineering subsequently branch off into non-engineering jobs which have a higher prestige and a bigger pay packet.

In order to exploit the emerging job opportunities, the universities should
train and supply talented engineers. This is true with all branches of engineering. If our universities churn out ill-trained graduates, it would only increase the number of "highly qualified" but "demoralised" unemployed youth as the private sector industries would not compromise on merit. This scenario would only intensify the existing social menace for which one of the root causes is unemployment.  In this context, the central bodies like AICTE should take up more important roles than just giving approval for new colleges.  After completing an engineering course, the choices become limited as one's ambition is enhanced while doing the engineering course. Unless a candidate is properly shaped as a talented engineer, he/she would not only face disappointment but for many reasons, also he/she is not able to pursue any other career path that are available before a science graduate. A conservative estimate shows that one among the ten who pass out of a secondary school becomes an engineer. In
essence, by making everyone as engineer, we have raised the hopes of younger
generation as all said there is a glamour attached to engineering degree.  If those hopeful youth are not going to realise what they dream, it would definitely lead to unexpected consequences. Nowadays, even parents ignore the interests of their kids and they do not bother to pay hefty fees for engineering course (around Rs 40,000 as only fees) as they also fall prey to this false prestige. If a student gets high marks in secondary examination and if he/she is willing to do a basic science course, he/she would be ridiculed. By foisting an engineering course on a student whose attitudes are not for it, his/her career is damaged or career course is changed. Apart from the society's
set views and  parents' miscalcualtion,  the government more precisely the AICTE is responsible for this problem which is currently in the brewing stage.

The idea behind granting permission to many engineering colleges is basically
to train many engineers who would become entrepreneurs and run businesses on
their own. However, the reality is that most of those who qualify as engineers aim to get a job and settle down. The basic reason for the failure of the concept of grooming entrepreneurs is that the curriculum do not train them properly. This may seem to be a sweeping statement. However, if one takes a position of a harsh judge, one can find truth and meaning in the statement. Let us not discuss about starting a business as it requires many other talents apart from being technically sound.  Let us take the cases such as a fault in domestic electrical wiring, a problem in a home computer/Television, or a problem in a pump or a table fan. How many electrical/electronics/ mechanical
engineers fresh from college confidently rectify these practical problems. The
illustrations may seem to be very mundane but the question remains. If the answer is that "not many would do it" baring few exceptions, what are we training them for? One would expect chemical engineers to be more entrepreneurial as this is a technology course. Let us analyse why these colleges do not produce well-trained talented engineers? To establish the crux of this article, the author would like to do a case study on Chemical engineering curriculum.

This author who worked as a faculty in a reputed engineering college and who is now working as a scientist is aware of many chemical engineering departments where the course content is very poorly designed. This can be established by taking instances from different engineering branches. However, this author specifically deals with the erosion in chemical engineering teaching for two reasons; one reason being the fact that this author tried to collect sufficient data to put the facts before the students pursuing chemical engineering. The other most important fact is that with the proliferation of chemical engineering departments especially started by self-financing colleges, the
output of chemical engineers has increased many fold. But the shocking reality is that the quality of chemical engineers passing out has declined over the years. In the liberalized economy, consumer goods and chemical industry is expected to grow specially in the private sector, predominantly multinational companies who are particular about the technical merit of candidates. For instance, this author who visited many chemical engineering departments across the country invariably found the sequence of subjects severely handicapped by the lack of logic. Anyone who has good appreciation for chemical engineering would acknowledge the fact that the subject on Reaction Engineering should be taught before the transport processes are dealt with. Again, the student would find transport processes interesting only if they were made to appreciate the multiple phase phenomena occurring in a chemical reactor. The subject "Heterogeneous Chemical Reaction Engineering" used to be taught as a core subject in BE courses. Nowadays, this core subject is made as an elective in the syllabus. When this author tried to find out the reasons for taking this subject out of core subjects, no proper reason was given. If this need not be taught in undergraduate classes, one is curious to know the logic and relevance of including mass, heat and momentum transport in the core curriculum. Again these transport subjects are taught in many chemical engineering departments without highlighting the similarities among all these transport processes. The sequence of teaching these subjects is very crucial for better understanding of these transport processes. For convenience sake, these subjects figure in an improper sequence in the syllabus designed by the universities/autonomous colleges. This is true even with other branches of engineering.