Imparting skills which make students employable is far more valuable than a degree on paper.

Indian education system is undergoing a crisis. Degrees are simply not able to fetch jobs to graduates. The time spent on earning the degree along with its fees yield absolutely no return. A simple instance in Uttar Pradesh where over 23 lakh candidates (including 2.22 lakh engineers and 255 PhD holders) applied for 368 vacant positions shows the value of degrees generated by our system.

Graduates from Engineering, MBA and MCA backgrounds are facing extreme difficulty in securing a job. The repercussions are already seen across engineering colleges in Maharashtra where close to 50,000 seats were vacant last year. A similar picture is painted in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Telangana or even Andhra Pradesh. The national regulator of engineering education predicts that the overall capacity of the education system will slide to nearly 11 lakhs from the current 16.7 lakhs.

So how can our education system help our graduates reach out to their aspirations and goals? By helping them in generating skills rather than simply earning degrees. This is the first year when the salaries of top 20 percentile of ITI graduates will exceed that of the bottom 20 percentile of engineers. In fact, Michael Spence won the Nobel Prize for Economics for suggesting that employees are able to use their education credentials to get social signalling value. In India, this problem has been magnified by poor strategy, execution and accountability.

The Vocational training setup in India suffers badly as there is no policy head as the strategy comes from the Central Government while the execution lies with the states. There is a clear disconnect between the classrooms and the industry; students are taught automobile mechanics on a carburettor while all Indian cars have long ago stopped using this technology. India's skill crisis requires solutions that create new connections between the education and employment system to reduce the mismatch between what students learn and what employers want. 

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A tried and tested solution to enabling skill learning and providing a job opportunity is the apprenticeship programmes. These have been in place in Austria and Germany since decades. 

While the Modi Government has taken a step in the right direction by setting up a Ministry of skills, it is only one piece of the puzzle. As of today 23 central ministries are involved in skills but we all know what happens to the broth with too many cooks. Same is the case with the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC).

The need of the day is a syllabus overhaul and for every state to setup a Skills University which is completely industry focused. These Universities should offer academic modularity (flexibility to move between certificates, diplomas and associate degrees), flexible curriculum delivery, and a refreshed apprenticeship programme. Such universities will be equipped to offer both employability and social signalling value.

The National Skills Qualifications Framework is a good start by the government. The next step should be for the government to start hiring on the basis of skills' evaluation and creating a Skills Mission, which converges all such programmes into one. Lastly, Right to Education Act needs to be amended to become the Right to Learning Act. 

India is sitting on a large youth population – 10 lakh children which unless the government moves swiftly, firmly and decisively will turn into a demographic liability. The vocationalisation of higher education is an overdue reform. 

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Read the original story by Vikrant Pande at www.economictimes.com