Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, Chairman and Managing Director, Cognizant India, said the quantity and quality of engineering talent is going up significantly every passing year, and there is no real cause of concern about the recent fall in admissions.

“I agree that some institutions that do not have enough infrastructure such as faculty, minimum student intake and lab infrastructure are closing down. I see it as a good thing, as the good faculty and students will migrate to better-run institutions and increase the overall quality throughout,” he said in an interview.

Cognizant plans to hire 23,000 freshers this year in India, starting June, when compared to 17,000 last year.

Mr. Ramamoorthy said the quality of talent is being enhanced because of the government expanding the number of IITs and IIITs in the country while upgrading RECs to NITs.

Institutes such as BITS Pilani, VIT and others have expanded their footprint and set up newer centres in places including Hyderabad, Goa, Bhopal and Amravati, he added.

Large corporates are making significant investments in setting up institutions of higher learning as part of their philanthropic work, and dozens of premier State private universities are doing really well across India, Mr. Ramamoorthy said.

He also pointed out that the All India Council for Technical Education’s move limiting the core curriculum across disciplines of study to 160 credits and allowing greater flexibility with the remaining 60 credits, had helped progressive institutions to include courses focusing on new age skills such as artificial intelligence, IoT, Cloud and cyber security, among the bouquet of electives.