Vocational HE to save India

2 april 2012 - Indian businesses are short on qualified workers due to a HE crisis, a recent report by the country’s private sector states. Low student enrolment rates and a lack of quality would curtail India’s development. The answer? More practice-oriented higher education, the authors argue.

India's private sector raises alarm that the country's economy is suffocating from a shortage of qualified workers. In "India Labour Report 2012", it says that low enrolment rates coupled with a lack of employability of existing graduates have significantly curtailed India's development.

Lack of student enrolment and graduate quality

An HR expert writes that "[in India,] the issue of employability is centred on two challenges. The first one is lack of access to education and skills, and the second is rigour in education quality standards. Calculated investment and new technology can take care of the first issue. The second challenge is more about quality of students which results in aspiration mismatch between skills and job/salary expected."

Right now,  "58% of [Indian] graduates suffer from some degree of unemployability and formal on-the-job exposure is absent. [Furthermore, the country has a] gross enrolment rate of 11% while the world's average lies at about 22% and those of developed countries at 54%."

Distance learning and community colleges

In the past, the government attempted at increasing higher education access by fostering distance learning through meta-universities. Last year's analysis by Ernst&Young showed that this mode of learning already accounts for 26% of enrolment.

The authors of "India Labour Report 2012", also favor this approach. It should, however, be complemented by bolstering vocational universities as well. Here, they refer in particular to the practice of community colleges in the U.S. and Canada. In those countries, community colleges offering practice oriented 2 to 3 year degrees cover 45% of all student enrolment.

 "India's higher education challenge lies at the difficult trinity of enrollment, access and employability. Community colleges could be an important innovation. This mezzanine layer of two-year programmes could increase enrollment by 8 million from small towns, unorganised workers and the traditionally disadvantaged," Manish Sabharwal commented. He is Chairman of TeamLease services, the organization who created the report together with the Indian Institute of Job Training.

Regarding India's polytechnic education institutes, the report furthermore criticized the following:

1. Non - availability of courses in new and emerging areas.
2. Inadequate infrastructure facilities and obsolete equipment.
3. System unable to attract quality teachers
4. Inadequate financial resources
5. Inadequate or non-existence of state policies for training and retraining of faculty and staff
6. Lack of flexibility and autonomy to the institutions
7. Inadequate industry institute participation
8. Lack of Research and Development in technician education
9. Antiquated Curricula