SM Fasiullah for BeyondHeadlines
India churns out thousands of graduates every year but nearly half of them remain unemployable in any sector of the knowledge economy, says a new report by Gurgaon-based Aspiring Minds.
About 47% graduates in India are unemployable for any job given their English language and cognitive skills. The employability solutions firm recommends vocational training and substantive intervention at school and college level as measure to improve the current situation.
BeyondHeadlines possesses a copy of the report which is based on Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT) tests conducted across India on a sample of over 60,000 graduates. The report claimed to be the first ever national audit of employability of three-year bachelor’s degree graduates.
The employability of Indian graduates in functional roles such as accounting is 2.59%, while in sales related roles it’s 15.88% and for roles in the business process outsourcing (BPO/ITeS) sector it’s 21.37%.
The graduates’ employability in the ITeS and BPO sector is 21.37%, while in IT Services sector and the IT Operations sector it stands at 12.97% and 15.66% respectively.
In the Teaching sector, employability of graduates found to be 15.23%. The major roles in this sector involve teaching and school/college administration.
The report also noted that more males are pursuing three-year graduate degrees though females show similar or higher employability to males. There are 109 males to every 100 females in three-year degree programs.
Aspiring Minds stated that their research team had studied how non-professional graduates performed on each competency (from a competency framework developed by Aspiring Minds), based on the response data on different items.
“The employability has been quantified by Aspiring Minds, based on benchmarking studies conducted at various companies across different sectors, defined by a theoretical understanding and empirical validation of the knowledge, cognitive skills and domain expertise required,” the report noted.
Commenting about the latest report, Aspiring Minds co-founder and CTO Varun Aggarwal said that it is in line with their commitment of reviewing higher education, similar to what they did for engineering and management.
“We attempt to gain a clear understanding of exactly what percentages of graduates are employable for different job profiles available for the fresh non-professional graduates,” added Aggarwal.
“We sincerely believe this report will be a useful tool in the hands of conceptual and empirical – educationists, policy makers and corporations and make them reflect with regard to what makes upon and implement the right interventions to bridge the gaps.”
While presenting very grim picture that 44% graduates don’t know the shortcut for paste-command and 56% fail to recognize the valid email- Id format, the firm recommends the need to address the issue at grass-root level with immediate interventions in every possible sphere.
