The evolving breed of Mechanical Engineers?!

Our batch of 1998 consisted of 110 mechanical engineers (including one lady engineer, I must add). 14 years since, today, there are hardly 10 to 15 of these engineers in the field that they were trained for. Of course, those select few have moved over to managerial and advisory roles, but are still in the domains of mechanical engineering. The majority rest were diluted by the lure of opportunities offered by the information technology and management world. For example, the starting salary offered to a fresh ME in 1998 was about Rs. Ten Thousand a month by mechanical engineering companies as compared to about Rs. 20-25 thousand a month for an ME who had got into the software stream. One brave soul asked the employers of a large software consultancy firm at their PPT (Pre-Placement Talk) the reason they were hiring engineers from other branches. They promptly said that they were looking at the maturity and intelligence absorbed during the four years of engineering, all the training required to prepare the recruits for the industry would be provided by them in 3 months, based on the foundations of engineering in any branch!

Any of the elite IITs would spend around Rs. 200,000 per year to train each of the 1,000+ students that pass through the hallowed corridors of the schools. For a few bucks more, a mechanical engineer would trade for a 4X4 cubicle in a software consultancy against a buzzing, full-of-action shop floor 4 times the size of a football ground? There are cases of MEs, who, after their masters from an IIT, have coded in COBOL for the notorious Y2K issue! 

Of course the disparity in pay scales has also shrinked today and there are mechanical engineers who are paid more than their software or management counterparts. That is also because these select few who have chosen to stay in the field have all taken up some kind of higher education (masters and PhD) and they have grown to be so good in their fields that they are close to being irreplaceable.

I remember an old engineer had once said - mechanical engineering is the mother of all branches. Of course, that was at the time when there were barely three streams in engineering - civil, electrical and mechanical. And an odd university offering chemical engineering. These days, even a mediocre engineering college offers at least 10 streams that include unheard of types like transportation, printing, biomedical and information technology (no offence to these engineers, this is the day of specialization). I wonder if these are the reasons behind the dwindling numbers - the generic mechanical engineering has been split into metallurgy, and others? 

No, out of the 110 engineers of my batch, they were all mechanical engineers, only about 10 of them had the passion to follow the field. Today, if I have to hire a mechanical engineer for my team, I have to sieve through literally hundreds or more of resumes and spend many hours of interviewing before I end up with the right one. And all of them have existing jobs. Mechanical engineers, what has our tribe evolved into?