Employment,Employability and Higher Education in India

The demand for labour in India is likely to remain high and robust in the coming years, both nationally and internationally. But this would demand skilled and qualified labour. The employability of Indian youth has emerged as a major concern in recent years. Ironically, it is not just the uneducated and untrained that lack skills but it is also the educated that consistently lie below the required standards. It is with this background that the study focuses on analyzing the growth and changing structure of the Indian higher education system in the light of the education profile of the Indian jobseekers, labour market demands and the employability index for India’s high-growth sectors on the basis of existing skill gaps and suggests a broad pathway to plug in the gaps and missing links. A more robust demand for personnel in technical and professional services and a better employability index for the same sectors have probably led to skewed growth of the higher education sector. The greater challenge is therefore, to prepare our larger lot of the educated graduates from the general education streams for the emerging skill needs of employable youth.