Adding value to degrees

Aditi Tandon

For long now, India’s higher education sector has remained plagued with the problem of plenty churning out degree holders in bulk but not employable enough for the economy to hire. That bit is slowly changing now, courtesy policy shifts on the back of recent findings revealing that only 5 per cent of India’s workforce has any form of formal skills training to prepare it for prospective employers. Corresponding figures for some other countries are outstanding — UK 68 per cent, Germany 75 per cent, US 52 pc, Japan 80 pc and South Korea 96 per cent.

Not that the challenge of skilling Indian graduates is new. What’s new though is focused policy attention to the sector. Currently 54 per cent of our population is below 25 years of age and over 62 per cent of this is in the working-age group. That explains the urgency of taking skills training to colleges and universities, which currently enroll 3.33 crore students.

Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, points out, “Incremental human resource requirement in India till 2022 is of 109 million across 24 key sectors, of which top 10 sectors, including construction and real estate, retail, transportation and logistics, beauty and wellness and banking and finance, constitute 80 per cent of the required workforce. Our aim is to skill 40.2 crore youth by 2022. We have operationalised the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF), which organises qualifications according to levels of skills. Any student admitted under this framework in a UGC or an AICTE-approved institution is awarded a certification depending on his level. This adds to his employability quotient.”

For the first time in decades the ministries of HRD and skills are collaborating to see that Indian graduates land themselves not just degrees but also jobs. Their efforts are beginning to show on ground with top universities signing up for making their graduates employable. 

Panjab University, Chandigarh, recently started a course in welding technology to equip students of experimental physics and chemistry in hard skills. The university Vice-Chancellor Arun Grover says, “While most American and European engineering students have practical knowledge of skills they learn, Indian students do not. The government is now putting a lot of money into skilling. A new MHRD scheme is paying universities to establish skill development centres, engage industry partners and impart skills training to students.” 

At PU, Grover has engaged Larsen and Toubro to offer the welding module. The university is offering similar skills in some other departments such as medical representatives training in pharmacy. 

Besides, new flexibilities in academic structures are allowing varsities to offer students with courses of their choice rather than pre-decided combinations they were earlier forced to study.

Double-edged training

Colleges and universities are hence being equipped to train graduates for jobs at two levels. One, UGC has introduced a new Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) across its colleges to allow students the freedom to study contrasting subjects they could never imagine in the past. “CBCS allows the freedom to study maths and music or physics and literature together. It also allows students to finish courses at their own pace rather than being bogged down by institutional deadlines. The system is on par with global practices and allows inter college credit transfers,” says UGC chief Ved Prakash.

At the second level, the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) under the Skills Ministry is entering into MoUs with universities which then use NSDC’s industry partners across 41 job sectors to train students in skills for enhanced employability. University of Delhi has signed an MoU with NSDC under which annually around 60,000 students admitted to each DU college (there are over 80) under the UG Programme will be given in second and third years the opportunity to acquire special skills for jobs and entrepreneurships related to the knowledge they obtain at UG level. 

DU has signed up for skilling in Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI); IT and IT Enabled Services (ITES); Health Care; Media and Entertainment; Tourism and Hospitality and Automotive Industry. A nominal fee of Rs 2,500 per semester is charged for training for a total of four semesters which students can pay by availing of a bank loan through NSDC, repayable when they get a job.

Recently, under this programme the NSDC has reached out to over 1,500 colleges across 25 universities, including Savitribai Phule University of Pune; DU; 60 colleges of government of Karnataka and the Department of Higher Education, Punjab. Private universities that have signed such MoUs for skilling are: Gautam Buddha University; Centurion University, Amity University Gurgaon; Vel-Tech University; IILM Sharda University and Mahrshi Dayanand University. In addition, MoU with AICTE was signed to tie up for 100 community colleges and with the UGC for 150 community colleges and 127 colleges for vocational programmes.

Asked why top varsities are opting for NSDC MoUs, Rudy says, “We promise assured placement to 70 per cent of all students under this programme. Additionally, the AICTE has issued instructions to its institutions to train at least 100 students per batch under the NSQF. Already 30,000 students have been trained like this. The council has also been mandated by MHRD to train 10 lakh youth in engineering skills in the next three years under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana. This scheme will start from the next academic session across AICTE’s engineering colleges and polytechnics.”

Given the vast network of AICTE-approved institutions, the government hopes to spread its “skill the students” initiative far. A little-known scheme that the council recently launched is called Employment Enhancement Training Programme under which 7,500 students across electrical, computer and electronics branches of engineering colleges are annually chosen to undergo telecom sector training at BSNL centres. “We have appealed to all colleges to give skills training to 100 students annually, irrespective of the discipline. We have also now told colleges facing the risk of closure due to lack of demand that they can start Industrial Training Institutes on their campuses or lend space to the Ministry of Skills Development to run special skills courses,” Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE says. 

Inquiries reveal that the Skills Ministry has started extending a red-carpet model to revive engineering colleges and polytechnics that are increasingly facing sustainability issues due to lack of demand for engineering courses. At present 50 per cent of seats in all AICTE engineering colleges are vacant resulting in spare infrastructure in these colleges. Against AICTE’s intake capacity of 16.31 lakh engineering students, only 8.5 lakh students have been enrolled for 2015-16 year, indicating saturation.

Opening the doors for industry

As for the universities, they are learning to engage industry partners after years of operating in isolation. NSDC’s 41 sector skills councils, headed by industry experts, work on new-age curricula to ensure universities that engage with the Council offer the best to their students. The Wellness SSC for instance is headed by VLCC’s Vandana Luthra; Media and Entertainment SSC by actor Kamal Hassan and Construction SSC by HCC chairman Ajit Gulabchand.

That explains why NSDC’s skilling network is now spanning colleges and universities. The University of Pune Vice-Chancellor WG Gade explains, “The economy’s human resource needs are fast changing and we need to change our curricula to suit those needs. At Pune University, we devise our curricula every three years, but even so NSDC’s specialised skill-related curricula developed in collaboration with the industry partners can be used to greater benefit of students on campuses. Our only caution is students can benefit from skills if those skills are strong extensions of their fundamental subjects. We have now signed an MoU with NSDC under which its industry partners will train around 50,000 of our students annually in skills related to automation, hospitality, IT, healthcare, electronics hardware, food processing, media and entertainment.”

Even institutions like Aligarh Muslim University are adopting government’s skilling initiatives and have introduced new courses in modules like tourism, food craft and harvesting. Imtiaz Hasnain, Professor for Linguistics at AMU, says, “The focus on skilling is welcome and even AMU has introduced courses like harvesting and designing but the balance between critical thinking and technical skill oriented learning should always be maintained. My concern is science and technology even today gets better treatment over liberal  arts in so far as disciplinary focus goes. Let us not forget that MIT, world’s top technical school, also produced the genius linguist Chomsky. You should be striving for equal focus on disciplines which promote skill-based technical modules that prepare them for jobs and money making.”

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Where jobs are (2013-2022) 

Sectorwise HR requirements in lakh

• Auto and auto components 39
• Beauty and wellness 100.6
• Food processing 44
• Media and entertainment 9
• Handlooms and handicrafts 61.4
• Leather and leather goods 37.2
• Domestic helps 48.8
• Gems and jewellery 35.9
• Telecom 20.8
• Tourism and hospitality 64.8
• Furniture and furnishings 71.8
• Building, construction and real estate 311.3
• IT and ITeS 21.6
• Construction material and building hardware 27
• Textile and clothing 63.1
• Healthcare 38
• Security 48.3
• Agriculture and allied 248
• Education/skill development 42.9
• Transportation and logistics 116.6
• Electronic and IT hardware 46.1
• Pharma and life sciences 17.2
• Banks, financial services and insurance 17
• Retail 173.5

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The key challenge was to cement India's fractured skill ecosystem which had been existing in the economy for over 40 years. Around 21 ministries and departments were implementing more than fifty programmes in silos. Now we have a dedicated ministry with collaborations across sectors.

–Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister For Skill Development

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AICTE-approved institutions 

• Engineering 3,800
• Polytechnics 2,500
• Management 3,000
• Pharmacy 1,000

Vacant seats

• AICTE's intake capacity for engg students --16.31 lakh
• Students enrolled for 2015-16 --8.5 lakh

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• Current enrolment in higher education 3.33 crore: Boys 1.79 crore and Girls 1.54 crore
• Gross Enrolment Ratio in Higher Education in India 23.6%
• Total universities 757 of which 267 are private
• Total colleges 38,056 of which 76 % are private
• 80% of enrolled students are in UG courses; only 0.34% in PhD
• There is just 1 teacher for every 24 students in India