Coimbatore: Every year the number of engineering seats that goes abegging is on the increase. "There is no value for engineering," can be heard amongst not only students, but also from engineers. The magical word in today's parlance is `MBA'. One might be a commerce graduate, an economics graduate, an engineer, a graduate in catering technology or a lawyer. The common thread running through all of them is that they are all management students. The number of engineering graduates doing MBA is slowly on the rise, even in tier two cities like Coimbatore. Is it market driven or because the engineers want to equip themselves with degree in management?
"It is purely market driven," says A.G.V. Narayanan, Associate Professor, School of Management, Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology. "Industry, especially the manufacturing, automobile and telecom sectors, prefers only the combination of engineering along with MBA. They want technocrats with managerial skills. Nearly 40 per cent of the first year MBA students are engineers. This was never the case before. Along with technical knowledge, man management skills are stressed upon by the recruiters," he adds.
Says R. Rathna Prabhu, a production engineer who is an MBA student, "When my batch-mates and I joined as engineer trainees we were promised Rs. 20,000. Now, after a year, they are earning around Rs. 24,000. But after a certain level they will stop going up the ladder, because they do not have an MBA, which has become a pre-requisite to climb the higher rungs."
Says S. Karthikeyan, a EEE who worked for two years before quitting to take up MBA, "nowadays sales jobs are not separate entities; they are combined with service. A sales engineer also has to do the service, he has to deal with people. In such cases, just an MBA will not help. An engineer with an MBA will be a sure shot success in such jobs. Technical know-how and man management skills are required to be favoured by employers for promotions."
"Nowadays it is not enough to develop a product as engineers; one should also be able to sell it. Only people like us who have both the technical and management knowledge will be able to choose the right material for a product and also be able to decide the appropriate cost based on the market value," he adds.
Combined knowledge
The students are of the opinion that handling people at the workplace, especially on the shop floor, will become easy with the combined knowledge. Also their saleability and value as employees will be recognised on a higher plane when compared with their engineer counterparts. But don't engineers who gain experience on the job become good man managers?
"They do," they agree in unison. But what the other engineers learn in five or eight years, these MBAs learn in two years sitting in a class. Says S.M. Yaser, a mechanical engineer who wants to become an entrepreneur, "My father runs own business. He did not learn to handle business in a college, but I am sure when I get into business I will have an upper hand, because I learn all this at the initial stage itself." Rathna Prabhu, whose father too is into business, agrees with him wholeheartedly.
Managerial level
They do not only foresee a different way of working, but also hope that their entry into the workforce will be on a managerial level. As Area Managers, Project Leaders, their rise up the ladder will see no hurdles.
There are organisations that upgrade their staff in order to make them better equipped.
Where there are engineers waiting to be promoted, but do not fulfil the criteria of an MBA, the organisation undertakes to make them MBAs by giving them a two-year sabbatical along with the course fee. Some organisations have a tie-up with the Indian Institute of Management in various cities for getting their personnel trained. "But this doesn't seem to sit well on our group of engineers," he adds.
Says Karthikeyan, "the hidden clause is that these engineers when they complete the MBA will have to go back to the organisation that has sponsored them and will have to continue working there till the time specified in a bond made out by the organisation. Instead of going through all that, it is better to complete all the requisites and enter the field, even if means delaying the entry by two or three years."
Whether it is a compulsion of the industry or not, these students are liking what they are doing and at the same time getting better equipped to face the big challenge of tomorrow.
