Of Late, there has been a big nationwide debate on whether education is more important or skills development. Being into the business of skills development we have a synergistic view on this never-ending debate. Every nation is different when it comes to skill needs. Please mind that we are speaking here about the education and skills that are of industrial application. Although our thoughts can have universal applicability. The reason we mention this here is simply that every human endeavor, in the end, is for earning a sustainable income.
The Indian Scenario
In India no matter how beautiful schools we build or no matter how much our educational reach for the population increases. It is of no greater good as the subject matter or the curriculum is of obsolete nature. Just see the things that we are teaching our children and do some online research on the things that developed nations are teaching their young generations. We do believe that schooling is the fundamental point from where a human can actually choose his future profession or line of work. So it becomes vital that we provide our children with exposure to many trades, crafts, and professions at the school level so that they can choose their field early in life and should not become confused. If we speak about the Indian culture, from the very beginning our education system has a set of professions being pushed. They are mostly focused on science and commerce. And there too we would be pushing kids for the top jobs. That’s the very root cause of skills gap in India.
From the very beginning, we are pushing our kids to become doctors, engineers, and chartered accountants. Just because of this grooming they cannot see that there are many other well paying and professional career options out there. As parents and corporate workers, we should promote a better cause. Children should be made aware of the fact that there is life beyond being a doctor or an engineer. There are artists who also earn equally well. There are many vocational trades with high earning caliber. All this has to be seeded early in the life. To be very frank all skills development efforts that are happening in India are a quick fix measure and not a remedy. For the remedy, we have to develop skills very early in a humans life.
“This will be a multi-topic blog series”
Just touching the surface of the issue is never our intent. We are here to provide some concrete inputs on skills development. After all, it’s our business. Today we would be focusing on STEM factors in India also known as jobs driven by knowledge and skills of Science, Technology, Engineering, and mathematics. No one can deny the fact most of the business in the modern context is run on one kind of the technology or other. We have to create a balance of skills in the STEM sector of the economy as the problem of the skills gap and shortage is hampering the growth of related sectors also.
Education Vs Skills: STEM
“According to data from the leading job site Indeed, the average level of the shortage of skilled talent in India has risen from 6 percent in January 2014 to 12 percent in January this year in STEM sector. “
What is happening here! We are producing the maximum number of STEM professionals in the world every year. Still there is a skills shortage and in fact, it is on the rise. We guess that ends the education vs skills debate right here. We have a clear problem here. The data clearly shows that the education being imparted for the STEM professionals is just giving them a degree and nothing else. They lack the skills in whole.
We all know that the leading sectors who require STEM professionals are banking, finance and information technology companies. Trust us they all are feeling the heat of skills shortage and are losing money every day because of it.
Now the situation is such that even people without having formal education in STEM-related fields are being hired with cream packages if they demonstrate that they have the right skills. Companies are actually in a panic mode. We are constantly being approached by the companies for providing manpower that they can train to survive and eventually be competitive.
There is a huge demand for software professionals, but software development is a fast-changing environment. The coding logic and languages change very fast and like in any other stream having the right expertise and skills are what will make it or break it. The issue with the current STEM education system in India is that they are still training and teaching the students fundamentals that are no longer in use. So when the company hires a professional with such a degree they know deep inside that they are hiring a degree holder and not a skilled employee. They have to train them deeply in order to extract some productivity from them.
So put an end to the skills vs education debate we would say that education imparted blindly is never going to match skills learned through hard and practical work.
Conclusion
Concluding our blog post its very clear that in India there is a huge mismatch between what has been taught in the college courses and what the industry actually requires. Hence the need of the hour is deeper Industry- Academics interactions and synergy. Otherwise, the skills shortage issue will keep on growing in India with time.
