Rebooting higher education

Skilling and improving the employability of India's graduating workforce remains the country's biggest challenge, as well as its greatest opportunity

Reality bites. When the prime minister quipped that it was better to sell pakodas  than to be jobless, his statement kicked up a huge row, but he was merely stating facts; that there is greater dignity in being a productive person, than being jobless.

India is a nation with an incredible skill and education paradox. Several government and private initiatives have resulted in ramping up the numbers of higher education institutions across the country; at last count, there were 800 universities and 48,000 colleges. Yet, only 3.5 per cent of the country’s workforce is categorised as skilled and well-trained. This compares with 96 per cent in South Korea, 80 per cent in Japan, 74 per cent in Germany, and 47 per cent in China. Not surprisingly, a large proportion of India’s educated workforce is forced to seek employment or set up small businesses in the non-formal sector.

Tragically, augmenting higher education capacity in the country has mostly been a numbers game. Indian institutions currently enrol around 35 million students every year, but they’re unable to provide employment to more than three-quarters of them when they graduate; an overwhelming number of graduates are simply armed with a piece of paper that has little or no relevance in the job market.

Holistic change is needed in the education model. Skill development for enhancing employability must lie at the core of all pedagogy

Of course, India still produces world-class graduates in large numbers, compared to the rest of the world; but the number of institutes that produce properly skilled professionals who are appropriately skilled, trained, and world-ready, is still miniscule compared to the size of the population. The starkest evidence of this mismatch becomes visible when Delhi University releases its cut-off lists every year.

The fault lines in the higher education system are quite evident; the entire planning and execution of programmes is geared towards attaining numbers: Hours of learning, numbers of colleges per 100,000 of population, investments in teaching and grants, enrolment ratios, and so on. Without doubt, these are important; but considerably less attention is being paid to outcomes, achievement and the relevance of pedagogy.

It’s not that policymakers and educators are blind to the challenge. The 2016 Sharada Committee Report rightly emphasises quality of training and the need to focus on the twin objectives of meeting industry skill needs and generating employment. Even the national auditor, the CAG, is now mulling ways and means of measuring the achievement levels of education sector programmes and projects rather than concentrating just on the attainment of numbers, as is the prevailing practice now. Hopefully, in the coming months and years, this will trigger a radical change in the policy environment both at the Centre and state levels.

Yet, for Indian higher education to be truly transformed, institutes must play their part as well, and higher education must be re-booted and quick-started on a war footing. A change is needed both in output quality (graduates’ skills) and in input factors (teaching). Holistic changes are needed in the education model so that it aptly shadows market demand. This requires radical changes in teacher training, enrolment enhancement, infrastructure and R&D. Most of all, skill development and industry-readiness for employability must lie at the very core of all forms of pedagogy and subject delivery.

Our graduates need to be skilled, rather than merely being taught. The teaching model must evolve quickly from “learning mode” to “doing mode”, and industry-academia linkages are critical here. The focus must be in imparting skills which can be monetised, and there must be less emphasis on imparting knowledge and information that is impracticable.

There is an urgent need to emulate and follow the lead taken by institutions such as BMU and a few others, who have started simulating workplace-like situations in classrooms through strong industry linkages. Competitions, innovations, rewards for originality in problem solving, merit-based promotions, preparing for change and to face unpredictable situations — all must form part of the new curriculum.

Students need to understand and appreciate the challenges and the rewards that form the fabric of the market-defined real world. They must realise that today’s recruiters will only visit campuses when they are convinced that students have made some progress along the learning curve. Once this facet of skill-driven learning begins to seep inside the minds of educators in our colleges and universities, recruiters will see better ROI; they will frequent campuses and draw suitable talent in much larger numbers. As post-recruitment training costs and needs get reduced, and as more graduates get absorbed in the workforce, it will create a virtuous cycle.

The higher learning narrative should not only evolve with the changing times; it also must provide a platform for revolutionary re-design. A critical part of the new narrative is the fostering of a pioneering spirit, and the beginning of a culture where risk-taking is lauded and rewarded, within the higher education framework.

Entrepreneurs are the hallmark of success and maturity in any society. When graduates filled with a pioneering spirit join at the shop floor level, this, over time, sows the desire to venture out on one’s own. Plus, a pioneering culture at a college or university also results in innovation and out-of-the-box thinking and ensures that adequate numbers of real leaders and societal guiding lights are produced to lead the country into the future.

India’s priorities from here must be to create a million jobs every month in the country for at least another 15-20 years by tapping into global business opportunities and ensuring adequate audit of the qualitative standards of the workforce. The effort must also be to constantly nurture innovative and entrepreneurial zeal so that job seekers become job givers.

Being a young nation with 65 per cent of its population below 35, India needs education leadership for its survival and sustenance as a nation and to mitigate the possible risk of a breakdown in the social system.

The writer is Chancellor, BML Munjal University