India’s education system is failing the country’s workforce, with scores of people graduating from small private colleges lacking the skills required to secure employment. While some of India’s tech industry leaders come from top colleges, such as Sundar Pichai of Alphabet and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, lesser-known private institutes frequently have incompetent teachers, outdated curricula, and no opportunities for on-the-job training. This has resulted in a glut of incompetent workers within the workforce, with a study by employee assessment firm Wheebox revealing that half of all future graduates in India are expected to be unemployable.
Despite the lack of opportunities that many colleges provide, Bloomberg’s interviews with youths in India revealed several reasons for spending money on higher education, such as increasing their economic status to attract better suitors for marriage and securing government employment. However, the pursuit of higher education at private universities has also led to fraud, with one such institution investigated by the Indian government for selling fake degrees.
Manav Bharti University in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh sold up to 36,000 degrees since its founding in 2009, with qualifications being offered for as low as $1,362. Such fraudulent behavior highlights a need for greater regulation and accreditation of educational institutions in India. The country’s unemployment rate is 7.45% as of February, according to the Indian news outlet, The Economic Times.
The failing education system is particularly concerning as India’s population is set to overtake China’s by mid-2023, with the United Nations Population Fund’s “State of World Population Report” estimating India’s population will reach 1.4286 billion, which is 2.9 million more than China’s 1.4257 billion people. Anil Sadgopal, a former dean of education at Delhi University, has stated that “calling such so-called degrees as being worthless would be by far an understatement.” He told that Bloomberg,”When millions of young people are rendered unemployable every year, the entire society becomes unstable.”
The education system failures are particularly evident in small private colleges that lack adequate resources to provide quality courses, leading to an imbalance in employment opportunities between those who have attended top-tier schools and those who have attended lower-tier schools that may lack resources or accreditation. While there is great potential in India’s youth, particularly in the tech industry, it is a need of the hour to restructure and regulate the country’s higher education system to ensure that all young people have access to high-quality education that prepares them for the workforce.
Inadequate training and poor educational opportunities for the majority of Indian college students mean that few graduates are equipped with the skills or critical thinking abilities necessary for the modern workplace, particularly in fields such as technology, engineering, and business. Such issues have led to the creation and implementation of new regulations, such as the National Education Policy, designed to revamp India’s education system and reduce the number of unemployable college graduates.
In conclusion, India’s higher education system is failing its youth, and the consequences are dire. Millions of young people are graduating from inadequate programs with limited prospects for employment, which threatens to create instability throughout society. Moreover, the fraudulent practices occurring by some educational institutions have further discredited India’s education system. Therefore, it is essential that the government takes the necessary steps to revamp and regulate the education system to ensure quality education for all. Such initiatives will help India to fully leverage its greatest asset, its youth, to drive the country’s growing economy and social development.
