Years of preparing and guiding students for campus placements and careers after education have been an eye-opener for Kishan Kumar V.L. and Krishna Swamy A. The engineering graduates who went on to complete their post graduation from IIM Kozhikode, began their training programmes under the banner ‘Konfidence,' observed the absence of an effective decision support system for students readying for admission to the engineering colleges in the state.
After four years of extensive survey of the state's engineering colleges they have brought out ‘Kengcyclopedia,' credible actionable information on the whole process related to admission in the engineering colleges right from making the right choice to guiding you through the Centralised Allotment Process (CAP).
“What we have found is that generally the decision making process is haphazard. In most cases the decision was taken by the student with info from certain peer groups. These peer groups are usually parents and friends. Most of these parents depend heavily on the advice from their colleagues or from those who have gone through this experience before. We feel that an independent survey of the colleges in the state is needed, the facilities they provide, the faculty, for a right choice. Again when most of the popular streams are known there are so many lesser known ones, with immense career options, that still do not feature in the first choices of students. In fact, there are 22 B. Tech courses in the state but the rush is centered round the regular ones. All this happens when the career and life of a student depends on the decision, to a large extent,” says Krishna Swamy.
Both these engineering graduates worked for a while before starting Yellow Foods Pvt. Ltd. that produces ‘branded' banana chips. “Simultaneously we started Konfidence and now train and guide students in 15 engineering colleges in the State.” This is what they call ‘personal business' or better still ‘self-employment.' “These training sessions opened our eyes to a stunning situation. We have seen final year students not really sure why they had chosen the course or the college. Some of them sounded miserable. It is imperative that they go beyond the veneer of college brochures and info posted on college websites. This is what we ventured to do,” informs Kishan Kumar.
Last year they brought out a crude version of their decision support system. This year they reworked on it to create an improved version.
“We believe that this is perhaps the first time a thorough market research and analysis was conducted for the sake of the common man. Usually this is done for an institution. No college sponsors our work and for that simple reason we have no reason to show any of them in bright light. We have not accepted any advertisement, so there is no slant to our views and findings,” says Krishna Swamy.
The system is split four parts. The first, three books, give information about the various engineering streams offered by the colleges, data to help compare them, projects the ranks required to get a particular stream in a given college, fee structure, aptitude essential for specific streams etc. The second support will reach the candidate by post. This will enable the students to project their likely rank based on their performance in the entrance exam. The third comes after the results are declared. It guides the student for the CAP, the process of filling the options etc. And the fourth is of a subjective nature where the candidate can mail or call to access expert advice to sift through the set of options.
Flexi-options
The whole system is priced at Rs. 1,000. “We also have flexible options like the three books of information for Rs. 600 and the entire info that includes the two supplements for Rs. 750. We feel that a student needs to shell out just a fraction of what he would to otherwise have to spend to garner all this information. We have tied up with coaching centres, a couple of agencies to market the system. But we intend to reach out to the students directly,” says Krishna Swamy.
Log on to kengcyclopedia@gmail.
com for more information.
