Chem. engineering aspirants hunting in vain for colleges
Engineers who have done B. Tech (Chemical Engineering) have good job prospects, but strangely not many colleges are offering the course in Telangana state. The main deterrent is establishing the infrastructure as well as chemical labs that are very expensive when compared to other engineering courses.
To offer B.Tech course in chemical engineering, an engineering college should have facilities for heat transfer lab, fluid mechanics, mass transfer operation, chemical reaction energy, process dynamics and control and mechanical unit operations.
According to K.V. Vishnu Raju of BVRIT College, at least 12 laboratories have to be made available for the students to pursue the course. The cost for these facilities runs into crores of rupees that makes a big investment necessary on the part of private colleges when compared to establishing a computer lab.
Hence only five collegesOsmania, JNTU, CBIT, BVRIT and CVSR are offering B. Tech (Chemical Engineering) course with the total number of seats available being just 246 this year. This number is insignificant if one looks at the number of seats for other branches — CSE 18,767, ECE 18,540 and mech. engineering 10,841.
The craze for software career after engineering has resulted in students and parents preferring CSE and other branches denting the prospects of B.Tech (Chemical) indirectly.
Experts say chemical engineering graduates have good job prospects in chemical, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, cement, sugar and food-processing industries among others. Chemical engineering graduates who qualify GATE exam can aim for jobs in Indian Oil, HPCL, BPCL, ONGC, steel plants etc.
M.Vijayender Reddy, who completed B.Tech (chemical) in 2012, said that there are a number of job-openings but the pay package for freshers is less compared to that of software jobs. However, the salary will be more than that of IT professionals after working for some years, he said.
Echoing similar view, G.B. Radhika, a senior faculty in this subject, stated that IT job will become monotonous after few years, but the growth is huge in chemical engineering jobs.