Engineering – not so IN anymore?

I was at a function recently when I got talking to a distant relative, a girl into the tenth standard. Since she quite a bright student, I asked her casually what she wanted to take up as a career. Her answer quite threw me off balance. She said – I wanted to be a computer engineer, but now I hear that it has no scope, so I am as yet undecided!
I finally managed to ask her how she could say so in front of a computer-engineering student!! She looked nonplussed; evidently she had forgotten what I was studying. But the incident made me think. There was a time not so long ago when every kid’s dream was to become a computer engineer. Where along the way did engineering become so passé’?
A few days back, I heard someone comment that today there are engineers available ‘dime a dozen’. He was saying stuff like ‘the supply is exceeding the demand’. And that, of course, is the reason why (if at all) engineering not such a hot profession nowadays.
Ok, there are a few colleges where students desperately want to go to (IIT, NIT, IIIT and some others in various states). But students in those colleges mushrooming all over are definitely mediocre. There are no facilities, almost nil placements that make any above average student in such colleges feel that he/she has wasted his/her 4 years.
In Kerala where there are suddenly a lot of engineering colleges, seats lie vacant every year. And the vacant seats are mostly in the CS/IT discipline. To get more students, it is possible to allow students from outside the state to get admission here.
But personally, I feel to have students from different states come in will not be appropriate as in a lot of the colleges, the medium of instruction is Malayalam!!
Today, I know a lot of my friends who are qualified engineers but are stranded because they have no job. Most students here are unaware about topics outside the syllabus (ok, it’s the students’ fault!) and have poor communication skills. The quality of engineering education needs to be improved if such a scenario is to be avoided.
I know this person who joined engineering, apparently because he did not get seat for BSc.!! Such stories (I swear they are true!) are appalling. I only hope the situation changes for the better soon!