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Educational qualifications in job description serve two purposes: (a) reduce training effort before first assignment, (b) create an artificial gate to reduce the number of applicants. High skill industries in India are all facing talent crunch though we have more people than China now. If reason ‘b’ has disappeared then does reason ‘a’ need a full four-year course?
Of course not. Even now, an extremely high proportion of engineering graduates undergo 4-13 weeks of training as what they learn in graduation is unreliable and uneven. For employers it’s poor optics to test new joiners for deficiencies and then assign training selectively. It’s easier to bond with them through a common training specific to their assigned team.
A related trend that has become the norm in the IT industry is that developers augment skills continuously or in quick succession every few years. One way or another tech skills learned during graduation are obsolete soon due to tech transformation and automation of complex tasks.
This brings us to the impending formalisation of this trend: only learn enough of a contemporary trend to get a job, and then continue the learning journey in parallel. Some individuals may be able to upgrade continuously, while others may take short career breaks to step up.
Government’s newly announced NEP also enables this form of learning. Various skill bridge institutes will end up pairing with NEP accredited institutes to provide credits for courses completed by an individual over a large time window. Once enough credits are accumulated this individual will also receive a graduation degree without having spent a four-year block at the institute. Some individuals will pick a narrow focus and gain deep expertise, while others may explore far and wide as per evolving job opportunities and curiosity.
Will this be the end of four year graduation courses? No. But this will be the end of low quality four year graduation courses. Even this trend is clearly established where a large number of engineering seats remain vacant every year due to poor job prospects of such low quality institutes.
There will be domains where vast historic knowledge and breadth is essential for the practitioner. The operative work ‘practice’ immediately reveals professions like doctors & nurses (medicine, dental, veterinary), lawyers & judges, CA & CS, and surely a few more. For these there may not be as dramatic a transformation as discussed above.
For engineering domains, as an example, only a fraction will do the four year graduation as a prerequisite for masters & PhD and other research roles. These institutes will flourish as centres of research and expertise.
Excellent online content combined with NEP guidelines will have numerous benefits –
- Economically weaker sections will become employable with a much lower barrier.
- Youngsters will spend their learning years in the industry solving real world problems.
- Hardworking individuals will be unshackled from the unproductive cycle of exams & marks.
- Industry and individuals will be able to pivot fast as per the changing technological landscape.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
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