Here's what happens when STEM promotion is successful: A million Indian engineering grads scramble for jobs

Now we know what can happen when too many kids get funneled into engineering curricula. According to a report in The Economic Times, there were about 1,500 engineering colleges in India six years ago, and that number has since doubled. The result: Lots of engineering grads with few prospects.

The Times quotes Manish Sabharwal, chairman of TeamLease, a temp staffing firm, as remarking that though dozens of new institutes have been established in the past six or eight years, over a third of them are empty and perhaps are "worth more dead (for the real estate they sit on) than alive."

Similar sentiments come from Amit Bansal, co-founder of an Indian skills assessment firm. "Even without this slowdown, there are a large number of students who won't get a job," he told the Times. He goes on to estimate that at best, there are 150,000 to 200,000 engineering jobs generated annually in the Indian economy and far too many engineers trying to get them.