Express view: A matter of skills

The inaugural QS World Future Skills Index has ranked India’s job market as second only to the US in terms of readiness to recruit for advanced digital and green technologies. But the report also frames the country’s challenges on the knowledge-economy front. Despite its near-perfect score – 99.1 per cent – in market preparedness, India is placed 25th overall in terms of capacity to harness the opportunities opened up by new technologies. In other words, while job advertisements analysed by QS show that Indian companies are seeking competencies in advanced technologies, the country’s education system has not kept pace with these demands. A score of 59.1 per cent in the “skill-fit” parameter, the lowest among 30 countries, points to a deficit long underlined by industry bodies. As the QS report also points out, “Employers across India are highlighting a critical gap in the workforce’s ability to meet the demands of a rapidly changing economic landscape”. 

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)’s latest data also illustrates the system’s failure to embrace advanced knowledge. The fact that nearly two out of three post-graduate seats in India’s engineering colleges were vacant last year shows that M-tech courses provide little value addition. The AICTE’s criteria for setting up engineering colleges largely pertain to infrastructure such as classrooms, laboratories and libraries and human resources such as teacher-student ratio. The agency does frame model curricula. Its latest mandate to institutes to start courses in new technologies — AI, robotics, data sciences and cyber security — is in line with NEP’s vision of turning engineering colleges into nurseries for industry. However, keeping curricula in tune with rapid technological advancements is a formidable challenge, especially for middle- and lower-rung colleges which do not always attract the best faculty. The country needs to find ways to add to its pool of educators and also keep teachers updated with state-of-the-art knowledge. NEP underlines the need to set up teachers’ training colleges. That might take some time. For starters, smaller colleges could tap into the expertise of top institutes such as the IITs to train their faculty.

Part of the problem stems from the low investment in research and development. At 0.65 per cent, India’s R&D expenditure to GDP is very low compared to the global average of 1.79 per cent. In their elation over the country’s high score in one section of the QS index, India’s policymakers should not miss the larger message: Aligning the educational ecosystem with the rapidly changing knowledge economy will require action on multiple.