The new academic year is well under way. Every day, students from across all differentiating lines get ready, neat partings and pressed shirts, and set off to receive a quantum of knowledge. Every day, guardians watch their wards, as they tote a bag of ruled books that will document their journey through the year, aspirations pinned firmly to their backs. Not withstanding the myriad instances of sexist leanings, in general, this is a nation of dreamers who dream the upwardly mobile dream.
Qualifications, certifications and degrees form the foundation for this hoped future, and the success stories that surround them constitute a proof of concept. Education is no end to itself, such extravagance being ill conceived, given the context. Rather, an education is a means to achieve the relatively lasting security of salaried employment. The greater the length of the alphabet soup after one's name, the grander one's grasp of the world as we know it. Right? Wrong! The way we "do" education has seen some dismal results in this particular employment-chasing endeavor, which tell a different story...
It is said that India is at the throes of an education boom. The business of education and education-adjacent services is thriving, an indication that there is a healthy market demand for the same. Anecdotal accounts of educational institutions "mushrooming" across boundaries are popular entry points to a conversation about the current state of affairs. It is in those exchanges that one begins to hear the rumblings of concern about the phenomenon of graduates being "churned out," an image that is decidedly more unflattering than not. It is indeed a facsimile of positive development that more individuals are emerging with degree rolls in their hands than ever before.
However, it would be well worth it to concern ourselves with the very quality of those qualifications. What does it mean to hold a degree in Engineering? What area of knowledge has one truly 'mastered' when one waves a Master's degree about? What does one imagine a graduate to actually be able to do? After all, one only wins that sought-after salaried job if one can prove the ability to do things.
The 2014 National Employability Report, published by Aspiring Minds (AM), is revealing. In overall terms of employability, AM's statistical model conveys that a minimum of 47 per cent of the five million graduates were not fit to be employed in any sector. In specific terms, let's zoom in to look at the numbers for the sector most closely related to computer science. The report refers to a parent set that includes sub-sectors such as Information Technology (IT) services, IT products, IT enabled services (ITeS), and knowledge/ business process outsourcing and support. The aptitude test administered by AM is designed to cover objective parameters of employability such as English communication, quantitative skills, general problem-solving skills, computer science and programming skills. The sub-sector that absolutely demands a command over computer science and computational thinking, and not just computer literacy, is "IT Products". This is where solutions are created and released for actual application in the real world. Industry-ready employability in IT-Product graduates?
This is a severe serving of reality. The report published in 2010 states in no uncertain terms, "For India to maintain its competitive advantage, the education institutions needs to produce industry-ready candidates." Indeed, immediate intervention is required in the way that graduates are being produced. As we chart a graduate's learning trajectory, it becomes clear that immediate intervention is required in the way that students develop thinking-process skills, clarity of thought, and cross-disciplinary computational skills. It becomes clear that this is a matter of exposing a student to such development as early as possible in their ride along the education timeline.
This reality was precisely the impetus for creating a program committed to providing a learner with a holistic experience that combines knowledge of computer fundamentals, with an imperative to first grasp the foundational principles behind any concept or application skill. The development of the very same thinking skills that will ultimately deem an individual "industry ready" is gently begun at an age as young as 6 years old (Grade I). Given the undeniably dire state of affairs in the quality of our "degree holders," we hope to represent that kind of change that targets the issue at the grassroots level.
Here's to an India without the great education-employability divide.
(Author Rupesh Shah is CEO, InOpen Technologies)
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