New Delhi:
It's the season for staggeringly high cut-offs on campus, but one that don't necessarily make the cut in the corporate world. A new survey of graduate students across the country, conducted by Aspiring Minds says that more than half of them are not fit to be hired.
India produces 50 lakh graduates every year. Experts say with poor English language skills, computer training and analytical ability, making the cut from the classroom to the boardroom is not easy.
Himanshu Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO, Aspiring Minds says, "Our education system continues to be put down by the rote learning concepts. These rote learning concepts are not training people for functional skills who are going to be deployed into the industry in a more readily fashion without any extensive training."
The survey also says women seem to be better candidates to be hired in most categories surveyed. And metros are still way ahead of non-metro cities in terms of skill sets.
Dr. Pradyuman Kumar, Principal of Hindu College, Delhi says, "Degrees are given for the sake of being given. The curriculum should be designed in such a way that it ensures more employability. We need more interaction between the students and the industry."
"I'm not in anyway ridiculing or undermining the importance of cognitive and technical ability. All I'm suggesting is a balanced approach where education is more holistic, more interdisciplinary and really new student centric or learner centric rather than teacher centric. We still produce are amongst the best in the world," says Nishchae Suri, Partner and Head of People and Change at KPMG.
The results of the survey though indicative, they could be a starting point for how we view not just our education setup but our corporate outlook. Some suggest that employment needs to be viewed as a two way highway, where both sides have some distance to go before they can arrive at their destinations.