Can skill development lead to increased employability
India aspires to become the international capital of a competitive, talented and capable human resource. With the world’s largest youth population (around 64 per cent of the 1.3 billion people in India fall in the working-age group), this vision is not unachievable. However, to fulfill this objective we have no option other than skilling this vast population into a credible workforce, that can in-turn earn favourable financial prosperity for themselves and the country at large.
Another time-tested way to attain skills alongside a formal degree program is apprenticeship. We must understand the fact that no matter how incredibly brilliant our teaching pedagogy gets, it can never replace the experience that a person obtains on-ground when he/she actually works in the industry. For long-term apprenticeship options to become feasible for students, it is required that our policy-makers create more room for apprenticeship in degree programs – the usual window of 2-3 months towards the final year of the program is too insufficient.
DEFINING A ‘GRADUATE’
There are elementary flaws in our elucidation of the word ‘graduate’. There are people who are graduate with degrees, yet unemployable; then there are people who are employable, hold skills, yet unemployed. The Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is a commendable step by the Government to bring these people into the mainstay and to tag them at par with the ‘graduates’. It provides for evaluation & grading of the skills obtained by an individual through informal experience, observation and selflearning.
Considering the recommendation of National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) in draft National Education Policy 2016, the skill-grade levels thus obtained by RPL certification would have their formal degree/ diploma equivalent. For example, a third year student in any regular degree program, a vocational course advance diploma holder, a vocational course degree holder and an RPL Level 5 certificate holder will be all treated similar and allocated a level ‘7’ under the upcoming framework.
This effectively means that millions of traditionally skilled labourers in India, which despite being employable were not getting employed in the formal sector, will now have a formal education tag upon clearance of the RPL assessment.
This would not only help in getting employable workforce into the industry, but would also help restore the dignity of skills over mere degrees.
CONCLUSION
The fact is that knowledge and application of knowledge should go hand-in-hand. We can’t afford to have a workforce that relies on on-job training to earn skills. Therefore, it’s time for us to accommodate skills training & education in our existing higher education curriculum, so that our universities can produce aware, capable and above all, employable graduates.