The rising technical skills gap: getting to the bottom of the issue

Published in

Wharton India Economic Forum

5 min readSep 15, 2018

A 2016 report by FICCI and E&Y on higher education in India states that over 80% of India’s engineers and 90% of MBAs lack the skills required to be employable [1]. If the skill gap remains unaddressed, our 850M strong working age population will soon be our biggest liability, instead of an asset. The state of higher education is so dismal that despite having more than 6K engineering colleges, none of the Indian universities including IITs could make it to the top 100 colleges across the world [2].

The existing skill gap becomes even more dangerous in the light of the fast changing world of technology companies where employees are expected to learn and upskill continuously, and not just know what they learnt in college. While not discounting the massive challenges India faces in all streams of education, this is a particularly pertinent issue when it comes to technical education. It is no exaggeration to argue that a large part of India’s success story can be attributed to our IT players — TCS, Infosys, Wipro — who serve many major global corporations with their massive workforce of Indian engineers recruited from a subset of the very same underperforming ~6K engineering colleges. It is said that if China built its economy on the foundation of manufacturing, India picked IT services as its weapon. The IT/ITeS industry contributes 7.7 per cent to India’s GDP and ~64 per cent to its ~$184B service exports [3, 4] Given the importance of the tech industry to India’s economy, it is vital to ensure that we have sufficient number of talented youth required to sustain and strengthen our unique position in the global IT industry.

However, we face a major problem. With advances in technology and automation, 70–75% of the IT/ITeS jobs would require new skills by 2022 [5]. Most of the skills required are in the emerging technologies such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing, robotics etc. It is a gap that our higher education is not well-equipped to fill.

The rise of ed-tech: digital solutions are increasingly filling the gap in the higher education landscape

The lack of our higher education institutions’ ability to be responsive and adaptive to the industry needs puts the onus of being job-ready either on the individuals or on the companies hiring them. This has led to the emergence of new age of learning where virtual universities are taking over and establishing themselves as a connection point between the job-seekers and job-givers. Nanodegrees, online certifications, and Skill IQs are replacing the world of university degrees and semester exams. It is not surprising that when NASSCOM, the trade association of the Indian IT and Business Process Management industry, decided to launch a platform for tech skills, it chose to partner with online tech content providers who bring the best of experts right into one’s study room rather than partnering with the venerated IITs. Industry players are working with online content providers to assess potential candidates, and train them in specific skills once they have been hired. It is a win-win for both students as well as the recruiters since quality and relevant education is being provided at much lower cost than traditional universities or training programs. The immense success of upskilling tech platforms in India and their adoption by both job candidates as well as the recruiters gives us a peek into the future of India’s higher education.

Back to basics: building a strong educational foundation is crucial to take full advantage of the opportunity

The rise of the ed-tech platforms in higher education might give us a sense of contentment that education has finally been democratized and we can learn almost anything at a click of the mouse. Unfortunately, this is not a sustainable, stand-alone answer to India’s education challenges. If we are thinking about a highly-skilled, globally competitive future generation, we need to think holistically. Teaching technology skills to the youth in their 20s can give us an army of engineers who are ready to write the code and build machines, but it cannot provide us the leaders of our future. Hard skills acquired in college are only a small part of the overall skill-set required by anyone to be successful in their career or contribute to nation-building. More importantly, some of the most critical skills required for workplace success, such as language, communication, ethics, logical reasoning, problem solving etc. are acquired in one’s formative years in the school.

The dismal ranking of India in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and low scores in assessments conducted by Pratham as shown in ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) paints a very gloomy picture of the future of 300M school-going children. If the quality of education is not improved in the K-12 segment, it would be foolish to assume that democratizing higher education and investing in tech education will solve the problem. Without such a grounding, our youth will not be adequately equipped to take advantage of these magical online platforms, which provide the vast amount of knowledge and expertise, from all over the world.

While the democratization of education is a process that should be encouraged, the government and the social sector, with their limited resources, need to prioritize. Instead of investing in “institutions of eminence” or giving tech scholarships to college pass-outs, the priority needs to be the basics. Government and the social sector must undoubtedly invest in its K-12 schools and teachers first and foremost. Building a strong foundation in schools is crucial before funding engineering institutes or the tech skill programs. Once the youth is equipped with the necessary and basic career skills, the private sector can train the huge base of talent in the industry relevant skills leveraging technology and their own expertise, converting them into an asset for our nation. A great quality of higher education without a strong K-12 education in formative years would make our youth analogous to a fancy glass building lacking a strong foundation, liable to crumble at any moment.

Swati Ganeti is an MBA student at The Wharton School (WG’19) and co-Chair of the Wharton India Economic Forum. All opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

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The rising technical skills gap: getting to the bottom of the issue

Written by Wharton India Economic Forum