Shocking: Nearly 50% of Indian graduates not fit to be hired, says a new report

It’s cut-throat competition in India whether it’s about college admissions or getting a job. For one job that is advertised in the country, there will be hundreds of applications pouring in, thanks to the sheer number of applicants ready to enter the bustling workforce.

And this competition will only become more intense as a new study reveals that graduates need to prepare themselves better if they want a job, tagging nearly half of them as not fit enough to be hired in a knowledge-based economy.

The study, National Employability Report-Graduates 2013, conducted by Aspiring Minds, a company involved in assessing various aspects of education, training and employment, reveals that nearly half of Indian graduates are not fit to be hired.

The country boasts of 5 million graduates every year but if nearly 50 per cent of them are unfit to enter the job market, it is quite a big problem that needs to be addressed.

“Majority (47 per cent) graduates are not employable in any sector of the knowledge economy. The employability of graduates varies from 2.59 per cent in functional roles such as accounting, to 15.88 per cent in sales related roles and 21.37 per cent for roles in the business process outsourcing (BPO/ITeS) sector. A significant proportion of graduates, nearly 47 per cent, were found not employable in any sector, given their English language and cognitive skills,” the survey findings show.

The study highlights the drawbacks in the education system of the country. ‘3 Idiots’, an Indian film released a few years ago, highlighted the glaring drawbacks of the dismal Indian education system. The protagonist, casted as a rebel in the Indian education system, points out to the audience that colleges and higher institutions foster a book-cramming notion of education rather than inculcating values that encourage students to think outside the box and look for possible solutions that the curriculum books may not have. The movie won many awards and was widely acclaimed for its thought-provoking theme, hitting the right cord with the masses.

This premise is what the study conducted by Aspiring Minds says makes the transition of students from the classroom to the boardroom difficult.

“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,” points out Himanshu Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO, Aspiring Minds.

The situation is worse in smaller cities when it comes to having the right skill set to enter the job market, the survey shows.

“These eye-opening results reinforce the fact that imparting factual knowledge and then testing students on factual knowledge is promoting rote learning and thus, slowly corroding our future workforce,” stressed the report.

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