Job Oriented Study Tips for Engineering Students

In today's world of diverse systems and technologies, the engineering education system plays an important role in shaping the future of Engineering Students.The students will be taught the subjects that their college University has decided for different branch of studies. Since deciding what branch of engineering to choose is on the student’s themselves, actual goal of what does the student want from engineering study is an important aspect during the course of the study. It so happens that what is taught in the academics is not complete for what is required in the engineering students' job that they are going to pursue in their future.  Most of the time this gap is not realized by the students during the course of their study, because they are not connected to what's happening outside.  Students are lucky if their teacher has worked in the software industry and then taken up a teaching profession. However this is rare. In this post I'm going to talk about the Gap that may exist in engineering education system and how can students tackle it.

Where is the gap in the System?

If you look at the pace that new technologies, solutions are being adopted by various companies, you will see that there is drastic change as opposed to traditional way of development. For example, it’s the era of smart phones/tablets and their apps. It’s the era of cloud computing and software services being ported to the cloud and marketed as SaaS (Software as a Service). It’s the era of adopting new software methodologies such as Scrum (Agile). These are just few examples in the field of software engineering and there are many more for different branches of study. None of these methodologies are there in Engineering Syllabus. As a matter of fact the software engineering syllabus does not change as per the real world technology trend. And this gives raise to the gap in the engineering education. There can be some subjects that are not used at all in the real world. I'm not saying that it’s a pure waste studying the subjects; however, more attention can be given to the subjects that are really used practically in the future engineering jobs.

How should the students deal with this situation?

• Having said there are gaps, here are some thoughts as what students can do differently to fill this gap. Students have to be clear in the first place that what are their interests and what is their field of interest in engineering and they must stick to that. For example, a student's interest is Computer science, and then the student has to concentrate only on that field of study. I'm saying this because some students change their minds during the course the study and that sort of causes the disruption.

• Obviously students can't change the subjects that are being taught but they can always see the trends as how the technologies are evolving. It’s not just enough to complete the engineering subjects and get a better grade but its encouraged that the students can always think towards the recent technology trends and keep a pace with those and at least try understanding why the companies are adopting the new technologies/methodologies. This is important because, it’s a general tendency that the students will not think ahead of their study.

• Talk to your teachers often to find out the practical use of what's being taught to you. Read technical news papers, articles, and new methodologies apart from your engineering study. Take up few hobby projects (out of your engineering study scope) and execute those using new practices that software companies are using.

• There are no rules here as to what exactly students have to do here. It’s just important to identify and realize the gaps as early as possible and think on their own what can be done to fill those gaps and make the most of the Engineering Studies.