Rising unemployment: 3 reasons why India should worry about its graduates
A graduate from the university must not only be an expert at their subject and possess skills to work, but they should also have skills that make them ready to cooperate, negotiate, sell, work in teams, etc
- Jun 4, 2021,
- Updated Jun 4, 2021 1:41 PM IST
Unemployability is among the bigger challenges facing India (March 2021 average unemployment rate for India was 6.52 per cent, of which urban unemployment was more than a percentage point higher than rural unemployment rates).
However, stated this way it does not define the problem to enable us to think of ways to handle it.
One way to look at the data is to start with looking at who is unemployed and to what extent? Is it the youth who are more unemployed, are the uneducated unemployed more than the educated, among the educated is it the ones with secondary level education or graduate level that are more unemployed?
Courses need to be designed with focus on understanding the needs of the industry and being co-designed with the industry.
A graduate from the university must not only be an expert at their subject and possess skills to work, but they should also have skills that make them ready to cooperate, negotiate, sell, work in teams, etc.
Universities need to focus on developing competence rather than students passing the exams. Faculty mindsets towards curriculum design and teaching need to undergo changes.
In addition to creating a new category of vocational degrees, it is important to add a skill component to the courses being offered at the universities.
The advantages of more universities adopting skill embedded degrees, as proposed by UGC guidelines to offer internship embedded degrees released in July 2020 will accrue both to the graduate and the industry.
The graduates would be job ready and willing to work in the field of their study. The industry would find enough employable graduates in various fields. Increased productivity of employees would justify higher salaries for those who are skilled.
Universities and institutions of higher education may want to step up on the quality of their education to solve the problem of unemployment, especially of their own graduates.
As a country, we need to move away from incentivising the hiring of uneducated and undertrained men and women if we are serious about universal education.
(Neharika Vohra is the Vice-Chancellor of Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University and on leave from IIM Ahmedabad where she serves as faculty in the OB Area.)
Unemployability is among the bigger challenges facing India (March 2021 average unemployment rate for India was 6.52 per cent, of which urban unemployment was more than a percentage point higher than rural unemployment rates).
However, stated this way it does not define the problem to enable us to think of ways to handle it.
One way to look at the data is to start with looking at who is unemployed and to what extent? Is it the youth who are more unemployed, are the uneducated unemployed more than the educated, among the educated is it the ones with secondary level education or graduate level that are more unemployed?
Courses need to be designed with focus on understanding the needs of the industry and being co-designed with the industry.
A graduate from the university must not only be an expert at their subject and possess skills to work, but they should also have skills that make them ready to cooperate, negotiate, sell, work in teams, etc.
Universities need to focus on developing competence rather than students passing the exams. Faculty mindsets towards curriculum design and teaching need to undergo changes.
In addition to creating a new category of vocational degrees, it is important to add a skill component to the courses being offered at the universities.
The advantages of more universities adopting skill embedded degrees, as proposed by UGC guidelines to offer internship embedded degrees released in July 2020 will accrue both to the graduate and the industry.
The graduates would be job ready and willing to work in the field of their study. The industry would find enough employable graduates in various fields. Increased productivity of employees would justify higher salaries for those who are skilled.
Universities and institutions of higher education may want to step up on the quality of their education to solve the problem of unemployment, especially of their own graduates.
As a country, we need to move away from incentivising the hiring of uneducated and undertrained men and women if we are serious about universal education.
(Neharika Vohra is the Vice-Chancellor of Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University and on leave from IIM Ahmedabad where she serves as faculty in the OB Area.)