CLOSING THE COLLEGE JOBS GAP

A quiet anxiety runs through India’s university campuses.

- AMAL CHANDRA ‘Author, policy analyst and columnist ; SONY KUNJAPPAN Head, Department of Studies in Social Management, Cental University of Gujarat

Degrees are conferred with pride; yet, for many graduates, they mark the beginning of a sobering gap between education and opportunity. For a country that has invested heavily in expanding higher education, this disconnect is more than an economic concern—it is a crisis of trust between the promise of learning and the lived realities of young Indians.Today, India hosts one of the world’s largest higher education systems. This expansion is frequently cited as evidence of widening access and democratic aspiration. Yet institutional growth has not been matched by a commensurate integration of employability and skills into higher education. The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24 shows that only 0.97 percent of Indians aged between 14 and 18 have received any form of institutional skilling. Limited exposure to structured training weakens the link between education and economic opportunity, undercutting the promise of India’s demographic dividend.

Employability assessments reveal the scale of the problem: barely 55 percent of Indian youth meet industry benchmarks, leaving nearly half of degree-holders unprepared for work. This makes skill education within universities indispensable—particularly market-aligned, application-oriented skills in the service sector which absorbs over half of formally-trained youth.

At its core lies a longstanding university-industry rupture: campuses remain insulated around instruction and certification, while industry has evolved separately—a model no longer viable amid technological change, global competition and fluid labour markets.