By Vishwa Mohan
The skills of today will not shape the jobs of tomorrow. This much is certain when we look at the waves of digitisation crashing with greater speed into sectors and economies with greater impact than ever and transforming them in new ways.
This challenge of education not keeping up with the job market can be seen in the numbers. While India’s demand supply gap for skilled digital talent is the world’s smallest, it is set to increase by over 3.5 times by 2026. Even in 2023, only a little over half (52%) of students are job-ready when they hit the workplace. As successive technological advances are reinforcing, the students of today must enter the workplace with a strong foundation in skilling and innovation to create and leverage the opportunities.
The foundational assumption – degrees equal jobs – is fast losing relevance, but it continues to reign over the role that academia plays in the lives of tomorrow’s talent. While government and industry efforts have attempted to bridge the talent gap, an enduring set of challenges has hindered job readiness commensurate with India’s potential. Obsolete or theory-based syllabi and assignments, lack of industry-experienced instructors, and little to no mentorship and irrelevant internships, continue to blur the industry relevance of undergrad and post-grad learning.
The industry, having to make major outlays on upskilling fresh graduates, is fast coming to consensus that a degree is not worth its paper if it is not backed by robust infrastructure, industry exposure and programmes that encourage learning by doing.
More importantly, formal degrees still cannot ensure the one ingredient that will define success in a world where disruption is happening every week: the curiosity that births innovation and futuristic thinking. This sense of curiosity and excitement is critical; without it, they cannot conceptualise new possibilities and lack the frameworks and insights to translate them into products and services.
An experience that erases the rigid limitations of 12 years of rote-learning must be one that is completely isolated away from the pressures and dogmas of ‘real life’. In sum, an intensive offline programme that first sharpens their fundamentals to a razor’s edge, and then gives them years (instead of rushed internships where they enter half-baked) to test what they have learned, through industrial experience, leading up to a specialisation. Here, every hour can be committed to sparking off ‘what if’ questions that blossom into technological exploration and towards commercial feasibility.
Harnessing the full potential of India’s demographic dividend merits giving India’s youth an opportunity to immerse in this knowledge ecosystem that is shaped by strong theoretical foundation and then the experience to test and use their learning. Their proficiency can be built from zero via sustained exposure to mentors and leaders, sourced from tech firms that set the benchmark for innovation capital.
Such a programme requires organisations whose physical and digital footprint is already robust across geographies, from the city down to the rural district level, and who have a grasp of delivering in India’s diverse languages. Most importantly, it requires organisations who are trusted, valued, among a generation that seeks and needs a measurable ROI for education.
Offline skill-building programs offer a holistic approach to address these critical shortcomings. By integrating classroom learning with hands-on training and industry exposure, these programs create a fertile ground for students to nurture their talents and aptitudes. While traditional education confines learners within the walls of schools and colleges, offline programs break these barriers, immersing students in a conducive environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking.
Merely relying on India’s current centres of excellence – the IITs, the IISc, etc. to perform this function – is not enough when we consider the tens of millions of students who stand to be excluded. India’s vision to emerge as a technology centre for the world needs students whose competency levels are rigorously tested and honed by a proven pedigree borne from experience and insight.
The need for a skilled workforce has never been more vital. India, with its burgeoning, aspirational population and youthful demographic advantage, must urgently find solutions that empower its young population to enter and thrive in the jobs that will define industries now and in the future.
The author is chief information officer of PW Skills.