Hyderabad:Engineering has long been an easy punchline in India, the degree everyone seems to take, the branch chosen because of marks or seat availability, and the graduate who eventually does everything except engineering. But as Engineers’ Day approaches on September 15, the old joke is meeting a changing reality, with students increasingly favouring newer streams such as AI and ML. So what does an engineering degree actually mean in 2026?

For Keval Mande, a 2024 IIT Hyderabad master’s graduate in computer science who is now head of AI and Infrastructure at a city-based start-up, the answer became clearer after entering the workforce. “The first few months at work teach you how things actually work — the company, the products, the specifications and how everything comes together. There is a lot more hands-on work at a job,” he said.

Mande said his education had given him strong conceptual knowledge of 5G and telecom and an advantage in technical skills. But the workplace also exposed areas he wished he had developed earlier. “I wish I had better communication skills at the start,” he said, adding that interpersonal skills and networking also mattered.

Looking back, he said, “The ability to learn and actual hands-on experience are more valuable.” Exposure to real-world work, he added, helped.

Dr Sabbineni Nagini, professor of CSE at Vallurupalli Nageswara Rao Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology (VNRVJIET), said the stereotype that engineering is a default choice still has some relevance, with the degree continuing to be associated with “job security, financial stability, knowledge and social prestige”.

Yet she sees engineers moving across professions as evidence of the degree’s breadth rather than its failure. “The irony that ‘engineers do everything except engineering’ perhaps reflects not the weakness of the degree, but its versatility and the changing aspirations of today’s workforce,” she said. “We have confused ‘using your degree’ with ‘staying in your branch’. Those are different things.”

The rush towards newer branches has also raised questions about traditional disciplines. Alwal Srivasthav, a civil engineering graduate and BIM engineer at Latinem, said civil engineering is often overlooked despite its scope “Most people don’t see that civil engineering is a great place. It is creative in certain ways, and there is much less competition compared to other streams right now,” he said.

“There is a lot of scope. You won’t necessarily be someone following the herd. You can have a distinct career path and slowly branch into other things,” Srivasthav said.

He also pointed to inadequate guidance from “counsellors, teachers and professors”, which can leave students making branch choices without understanding their longer-term possibilities.

Dr Amogh Deshmukh, senior assistant professor at Woxsen University’s School of Technology, said the expectations from graduates have changed substantially. “Ten years ago, a graduate who knew one language well, had clean fundamentals in data structures, and could clear an aptitude test was employable,” he said. “It was a defensible position for a fresher. It isn’t anymore.”

He also cautioned against the rush towards CSE. “Everyone now wants CSE. That is the same herd behaviour in better clothes,” he said.

AI has made technical skills only part of the equation. Dr Deshmukh said students must be able to decide what problems are worth solving and check the answers they receive from technology. “Problem formulation comes first. AI is excellent at answering the question you asked. It has no view on whether it was the right question,” he said.

Dr Nagini similarly stressed communication, empathy, design thinking and problem-solving, saying students must learn to use AI without “outsourcing their judgment and intuition to it”.

For Dr Deshmukh, some of the most important skills remain simple ones- “Taking responsibility for a decision, explaining it to a non-technical client, working with people who disagree with you. Nobody outsources accountability.”

As Engineers’ Day commemorates the birth anniversary of civil engineer Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, the debate offers a useful counter to the old jokes - in 2026, the value of an engineering degree may lie less in choosing the most popular branch and more in how well students can apply their knowledge, gain practical experience and adapt to the demands of the workplace and build solutions to real world problems. 

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