Weak link between education and employment

The primary requirement for formal employment in India is a certain level of education. The current academic system is highly selective, with only a few making it to the much-coveted tertiary level that produces ‘professionals’—engineers, doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants, and so on. For most of our young people, the country’s education system does not translate into an employment opportunity. Approximately 47 percent of graduates in India are not eligible for an industry role. As per the Global Skills Gap Report, 92 percent of Indian employees believe the country has a skills gap.

This means efforts to increase our gross enrolment ratio (GER) for higher secondary education (which currently stands at 27.3 percent for the age group of 18–23 years) might be misdirected since there seems to be little value from an economic perspective.