Policy reforms in higher education sector will enhance employability

Policy reforms in higher education sector will enhance employability

Colleges and Universities lay the foundation for employability of youth. With over 116 million workers expected to be the working population by 2020 in India in the age group of 20-24 years vis-s-vis China’s 94 million, a lot would need to be done at the higher education level in order to ensure that the youth are job ready. This is the reason why higher education is going to play a critical role and reforms need to be expedited in order to capitalize on India’s favourable demographics.

It is estimated that India’s gross enrolment ratio (GER) is just 19.4 per cent. This means that only a fraction of the age-group 18-23 years is enrolled in higher education institutions.
In addition to this, the enrollment ratio’s are different for general category and SC, ST and OBCs. One of the fundamental reasons is that a lot of students drop out before completing their term. There is also gender disparity in enrollment with male enrollment being higher than female enrollment. Besides this, the quality of institutions is also very different in towns and cities.

The government needs to provide funds to a large number of institutions through some mechanism as it may be impossible to deal with them on a one to one basis.
The Planning Commission has taken a step in the direction with the rashtriya uchchatar shiksha abhiyan (RUSA) which would cover 306 state universities and about 8,500 colleges. The scheme aims to ensure that well performing institutions are given incentives. This is a step forward which can improve the quality of institutions and hence also bring out better students.

The government also needs to form a committee for bringing out courses after consultation with universities as well as the industry that would enhance the employability of the youth. This would not only help companies as they can find apt manpower as per their needs but also help in improving the reputation of the respective college. On its part, the government may have started increasing the number of IIT’s, IIM’s, AIIMS etc, but these institutions cover only a handful of the population.

What is urgently needed is to transform the universities, may it be state-funded or centrally funded. Millions of students pass out from these institutions every year. Since the focus of these institutions is purely academic and pedagogy is obsolete, students are neither job ready nor are they prepared to face the challenges they would be encountering. Introducing vocational courses can go a long way for enhancing employability of students.