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Employability of graduates big concern, says FICCI-EY report

Average salaries in smaller engineering and B-Schools almost half of that at Top 10 schools in the category

HRD Minister Smriti Irani with FICCI Senior Vice President Jyotsna Suri (2R), US' South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R), UK Universities Minister Greg Clark (L) release a knowledge paper during the FICCI Higher Education Summit in New Delhi

M Saraswathy New Delhi
While the Indian higher education system has made considerable progress in terms of capacity creation and enrolment in the last decade, it lags significantly in terms of global relevance and competitiveness, said a study by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and EY.
 
This report released at the FICCI Higher Education Summit here today said that low employability of graduates is driven by factors like out-dated curricula, shortage of quality faculty, high student-teacher ratios, lack of institutional and industry linkages and lack of autonomy to introduce new and innovative courses.
 
“Only a small proportion of Indian graduates are considered employable. This reflects in the fact that placement outcomes drop significantly as we move away from top tier institutions,” said the report. It added that this resulted in closing down of lower rung higher education institutes that are not able to deliver high-quality outcomes.
 
 
In 2014, as many as 120 colleges including 94 management institutes are expected to close down across the country because of their inability to fill the seats.
 
In 2012, 32 engineering and management colleges stopped admitting students. Among those that closed down were 5 engineering, 9 MBA, 14 MCA, 3 pharmacy and 1 PGDM college.
 
The report titled 'Higher Education in India: Moving towards global relevance and competitiveness' said that there is also a low impact research output and insufficient doctoral students is a gap in the system.
 
This is shown in the number of research papers published vis-à-vis the global peers. China and US score significantly higher in this space.
 
The report said that there is a missing research focus and culture in most institutions. It further added that there is a limited focus on entrepreneurship on campuses reflected in the fact that there are few institutes that offer programmes in entrepreneurship and have active incubation/entrepreneurship cells.
 
While the number of patents filed by India has grown at a CAGR of 12% from 2008 to 2012, these numbers are small compared to those filed by US and China. In 2012, India filed 18,173 patents compared to 5,61,377 by China and 4,88,744 by Japan. US filed 2,68, 782 patents in 2012.
 
According to the report, globally relevant and competitive would mean India prominently placed on the global higher education map, India as a hub for talent and a culture of research, innovation and entrepreneurship.
 
The report showed that 3.5 billion jobs are expected to be created by 2020 and China and India are likely to drive demand by 2020.
 
Skill intensive industries such as manufacturing and services are expected to contribute more than 90% of India’s GDP by 2030. Hence, the report said that the focus of employment is expected to shift towards services and manufacturing.
 
With respect to higher education, the report said that India is expected to produce a significant number of higher education graduates in the coming years. Data showed that in 2020, an estimated 42.1 million higher education enrolments will be seen in India, as compared to 28.5 million in 2012.
 
The FICCI-EY report has raised concerns about how only a few Indian higher education institutions are globally ranked. This is inspite of the fact that, India has 33,723 higher education institutions compared to 4140 in the United States.
 
The United States has 97 institutes in the QS World University Rankings (Top 500) 2014/15. However, India only has 6 institutes in the list. Similarly, while the US has 102 institutes in Times Higher Education World University Rankings (Top 400) 2014, India only has 4.
 
On one hand while a large number of Indian students are going abroad to study in foreign higher education institutions, incoming foreign students are limited in number, compared to 1,90,055 students studying in higher education institutions abroad in 2012, only 31,000 foreign students came to India.
 
The report in its vision has said that by 2030, they aspire to have 20 plus higher educational institutes in top 200 global rankings. Further, they also aspire India to be among the top 5 in terms of research and patents, with 90% graduates readily employable.

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First Published: Nov 13 2014 | 3:45 PM IST

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