CSE: The Kohinoor among the engineering branches??

From last few years we are seeing that everyone wants to do their B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering only. The other streams are only the compromises they are forced to make. Is it justified?

I asked the same question to Prof. Sanghi and I got a very apt response from him. Below is the verbatim transcript of that

Question:Sir just your own thought regarding the future prospects of CSE. In last two three years we are seeing a mad rush for CSE and it has clearly become the first choice miles ahead of any other stream. Don't you sometimes feel that one anything gets so much hyped its usually at its peak and a slide could be very near. Don't know whether its appropriate to say that its the peak yet.

Prof. Sanghi Response: @Siddharth, there has been a mad rush for more than a decade. And this is primarily because people indulge in wishful thinking. The total number of graduates in CS/IT/MCA, etc. is about 10 lakhs a year while the IT industry is recruiting around 1.5 lakhs. Let us be generous with the estimates of non-IT industry recruiting CS/IT persons and assume another 0.5 lakhs. This still means 80% unemployment. This is perhaps the highest amount of unemployment amongst all engineering discipline. And yet people prefer CS/IT over other engineering disciplines. And I am not talking about IITs and NITs. The graduates of good colleges would anyway be in the top 1.5 to 2.0 lakh graduates of the country. But smaller college. Why. Because the media talks about high packages, high number of jobs created, and never talks about unemployment. It does once in a while mentions unemployability, which means that the training is so poor that they can't get jobs even if there were jobs. So everyone assumes that they will study hard, and they will be in the top 1.5 lakhs, after all 1.5 lakh is a very large number and to assume that you won't be in that number is difficult for an individual. And when everyone in the country is doing that, it is difficult for an individual to say that most parents and students are being stupid. There is safety in following the herd, till it hits you after 4 years that you don't have a job.

The same thing is happening at IITs. Follow the herd. We shall choose disciplines based on last year's closing ranks. After all, not everyone last year could be stupid. 

You are going to have a career over 50 years. It is very unlikely that you will have a single career. You would probably change your career 3 times, and you are likely to make more money in later careers than the first career, that is why you will change. Does it then make sense to worry about current placement data. Does it not make sense to think of what will enable you to change careers, what will enable you to keep doing well in a career which is not in the area of your under-graduate studies. Is there any statistics that point to that people who did CS 10-15-20 years ago are richer than their non-CS counterparts. (Actually, I have examples to the contrary.) But in the era of instant gratification and with a strong sense of entitlement, one can not look beyond last year's closing ranks and placements.

I get a lot of emails telling me how useful this blog has been for them. A lot of sites link to this blog. However, what is the impact. So one year, I got the data from JEE about the program that all the candidates got finally. I looked at the data from the following angle: How many students got the program which was the best s/he could have got based on last year's closing rank and the next two programs in order of closing ranks, or the best option (again in order of closing rank) within the zone of that candidate. (It was little bit more complex.) More than 98% candidates had such a program allotted to them. Just think about it. We would like to believe that these 10,000 are absolutely the best that this country's school system has produced. And almost all of them go with the herd. Even the toppers amongst a billion people do not have the confidence of thinking independently. This blog has no impact what so ever.

So, CSE will remain the best option for many years to come.