One billion graduates, an asset or liability? Depends!

One billion graduates, this would be the ideal human capital asset that any country would dream of. But the ground reality is far from optimistic.

If we continue to ignore the quality of output from our educational institutions, sure we will have one billion unemployable and unproductive graduates. That could be a feeding ground for unwanted entities creating unrest, either in the name of religion or ideology or for mere survival. Most of studies indicate that only 15% of our graduates ( 25% optimistic) are employable. The real unbiased assessment would put it at a mere 5%.

India is at critical stage in her objective to be a peerless, unbeatable leader in providing intelligent and productive workforce to the world. To achieve this, we need to take care of a vital aspect of our professional education, which is preparing our students for roles (jobs) in industries and society; not just for certifications or degrees. Currently most of the institutions, their curriculum and their teaching methodologies are focused on creating graduates rather than professionals.

The Idea!

But there certainly is a proven way to improve the employability of professional graduates. Taking a cue from the Medical and Accounting professions would be the way out. Both these professions mandate exposure to the actual profession and work environment during their academics itself, leading to what we call 'professionalization'.

Because of the economic expansion and demand for workforce, some of the companies are professionalizing the professional graduates after hiring them (mostly in IT related organizations). This professional basics and foundation is supposed to be imparted during the course of the professional education programs in our colleges and universities but sadly, this is not the fact.

Implementation!

India did realize the gravity of the situation, the industry bodies CII, NASSCOM started talking about employability. There are a few initiatives, but nothing concrete or result oriented. Improving the capability of teaching staff is one of the initiatives. What is needed more is industry participation in universities and colleges. Leading industrialists have committed for education and stared colleges and universities; even there their own industries are not integrated with the institutions. Bringing in the industry, academic integration is the long term solution with the industry's continuous inputs being taken into consideration in framing the curriculum and teaching methodologies.

In short term we need to find a solution to make all unemployed youth employable. The team from InFI brainstormed on this objective which led to the conceptualization of “Professionalization Programs” for various roles across industries.

InFI

InFI has been successfully implementing the “Professionalization Program” model to create work force for roles in IT and ITeS industries for last two years. The bench mark for every InFI professional after the completion of “Professionalization Program” is '2 years Equivalent Industry Equivalent Experience”.

InFI takes the help of experienced professionals currently engaged in active projects in the relevant technology and domains. They are given very specific goals in terms of people development by working (doing) on projects. They become part of InFI project teams and mentor the team members (fresher graduates) by through work assignments, reviewing the deliverables and constant mentoring. The skill levels of InFI professional development program participants have improved multiple times after the Professionalization Program. Most of them excel in their career once they are moved onto their employment.

The employers of InFI workforce are extremely happy since they get well rounded, holistic workforce with technical, domain and process methodology knowledge. The returns are multifold not only on economical terms but also on the quality and the customer satisfaction levels.

InFI is scaling-up to create more and more professional workforce who can be deployed just-in-time and get immediate productivity.

To get professionally ready and employable graduates straight out of colleges and universities would require a consistent and sustained participation of both the educational institutions and industry experts. Even larger impact can be achieved, once we partner with colleges to help the outgoing students to be effective professionals for the various industry segments, towards which InFI is working on.