Boys dominate enrolment chart in hotel management, catering

NEW DELHI: An engineer or a tech graduate will never be out of a job, right? Well, you’re only 40% right. New data indicates that hotel management graduates are far more likely to be placed than those trained in architecture, engineering or even technology.

In the last four years, 77% (8,761 of 11,388 students) who graduated from hotel management and catering colleges approved by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) got jobs, while only 40% of engineers and technology graduates (20.7 lakh of 51.4 lakh) managed to find placement. Architects and town planning graduates were even worse off, with 35% (only 5,751 of 16,544) of them getting placed.

Though there are many more engineering and technology graduates than other streams, the data does seem to be in keeping with industry’s complaint that poor quality of engineering graduates makes them unsuitable for employment.

Of the seven broad streams under the jurisdiction of the AICTE, ‘management’ was the only one, apart from hotel management and catering, in which placements were over 50% of the number of students passing out, with 4.2 lakh out of 7.4 lakh or 56% getting placed. Boys dominate the enrolment chart in hotel management and catering occupying 86% of seats.

In contrast, girls (52%) outnumber boys (48%) in architecture and town planning, where placements are the lowest. Experts say that a comparatively smaller pool of employable youth and a growing hospitality industry are to be credited for this shift. Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and executive vice president of Teamlease Services Limited, said the findings were not surprising.

“There is a dearth of qualified trained professionals. Today vocational skillsets are being valued and students are getting placement,” she said. She agreed that quality was a question when it comes to courses like engineering and MBA and many of these degree holders were not employable. Manav Thadani, founder chairman at Hotelivate, said the trend was likely to continue.

“There is huge scope for service-oriented industries and accordingly the flow of students will increase to these streams,” he said. Dilip Chenoy, secretary general of FICCI, said the total base of hotel and management courses was much lower than engineering.

“Also, typically those who take hotel management courses want to actually go into jobs. If you look at the engineering sector, not everybody who completes engineering wants to get into jobs.