"In India, Educated but Unemployable Youths"
- From: mike <yard22192@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 19:52:54 -0700 (PDT)
news.google.com
In India, Educated but Unemployable Youths
Graduates Find Schools Don't Foster Skills Needed for Changing Economy
By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 4, 2009
NEW DELHI -- Barely eight months after leaving prestigious Delhi
University with an undergraduate degree in commerce, Reena Dubey is
back in the classroom, poring over a textbook on debt recovery and
taking notes on India's banking industry.
"I studied economics, accounting, trade, corporate tax planning and
industrial law for three years. But I was still clueless when I
graduated," said Dubey, 22. "All my education was bookish and
theoretical."
Hoping to secure an entry-level job as a credit card collection agent,
Dubey recently enrolled in a skills-building course offered by New
Delhi's Avsarr training academy for new graduates who want to work in
India's booming banking and retail industries.
"India's job market has changed, but my degree has not equipped me for
it," she said.
Dubey's deflating discovery mirrors the experience of most of the 3.2
million Indians who receive undergraduate degrees each year. The
Confederation of Indian Industry says that 25 percent of technical
graduates and 15 percent of other graduates can be readily employed in
the jobs that the recent boom has generated in the telecommunications,
banking, retail, health care and information technology sectors.
"The stark reality is that our education system churns out people, but
industry does not find them useful," said T.K.A. Nair, principal
secretary to the prime minister, addressing a recent conference here
in the capital on linking education to employability. "The necessary
development of skills is missing in our education."
About 69 percent of unemployed Indians are educated but lack skills,
according to the Confederation of Indian Industry. Only 6 percent of
the workforce has a professional certification other than a degree, a
figure the Labor Ministry says it hopes to boost to 12 percent within
five years. In February, the government announced an ambitious plan to
address the skills gap by improving vocational training and
encouraging cooperation between educational institutions and
industry.
The problem is compounded by demographic changes that experts say will
greatly expand the country's working-age population in coming years.
Today, about 54 percent of Indians are younger than 30. Census
projections suggest that the proportion of Indians in the 15-to-64 age
group will increase steadily, from 62.9 percent in 2006 to 68.4
percent in 2026. By 2020, the average age in India is expected to be
31, compared with 37 in China and 48 in Japan. Census reports say that
India is entering the advantageous "demographic dividend" phase just
as China leaves it.
In a report last year, however, the Finance Ministry said that if that
growing workforce does not develop skills soon, the country could face
"a demographic nightmare": a surplus of educated people and a shortage
of qualified workers as labor requirements continue to shift from
agriculture to industry.
"This is the biggest wake-up call for India. Our schools and colleges
do not provide the skills that India's new economic drive demands,"
said Amit Kapoor, a professor at the Management Development Institute
in Gurgaon, near New Delhi. "People are graduating without learning
how to get things done, without complex problem-solving skills,
without knowing how to put their theoretical education into practice,
and with poor articulacy. Our schools are centers of rote learning and
give out degrees without imparting employable skills."
The problem extends even to India's much-hyped engineering graduates,
who have been the backbone of the country's thriving outsourcing
industry in the past decade.
Every year, India produces about 650,000 engineers. But Pratik Kumar,
executive vice president for human resources at the information-
technology and outsourcing giant Wipro, says his company considers
fewer than a quarter of them employable.
"The biggest problem is the poor quality of teachers," he said. "The
teaching profession is unable to attract good talent. It is often the
last resort for people who could not make it elsewhere."
In the past three years, Wipro has created several funds to finance
grants, research scholarships and sabbaticals for teachers in
engineering schools.
"This is not philanthropy," Kumar said. "If we don't do this now, it
will hinder the future growth of our industry."
According to a recently released report by the Confederation of Indian
Industry and the research group Technopak, "most industries are
struggling to achieve their growth targets because of a shortage of
skilled labor." The report says some companies have begun hiring
skilled blue-collar workers from abroad and recommends the creation of
"skill councils" for different industries that would track data, set
standards and design training curricula.
But there is a cultural barrier to overcome, as well.
When the Confederation of Indian Industry set out a few years ago to
make India the "skill capital of the world," it found that many
educated Indians frowned upon the word "skill."
"It is associated with low-level jobs in people's minds. 'Skill' is
not meant for educated persons," said Vijay Thadani, chairman of the
group's national committee on education. "We have to change that
perception, to bring social acceptability and recognition to the word.
We keep repeating that skill is a bankable, certifiable asset. Skill
is currency."
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