It’s ironically a psychological shift of mindset from literacy to real education. The attention of education policy-makers, educationists and the international education community is moving away from raising literacy levels and increasing access to secondary and higher education, towards skills building required by the workforce to promote economic growth.
Education is considered as a shield against unemployment but to what extent does it protect us from the said contingency?
Education can hold a key role not only in finding a job, but also landing one that offers both financial and intrinsic rewards. Your level of education can affect both the breadth and depth of jobs available to you. You typically can apply for a broader range of jobs with more education, and the jobs you can get usually yield greater pay and chances for upward mobility but until which point we should rely on “just” education is the main concern. Recognition of the issue is also growing in emerging economies and middle-income countries.
Higher education experts say that universities are coming under increasing pressure to ensure that their graduates are ‘employable’, although preparation for ‘employability’ is still only rarely incorporated in university courses, and the skills that could make a difference in finding employment and ways to deliver those skills are still not evident.
There is growing awareness of the need to link education to employment. There may be a problem on the supply side – that you’ve got all this unemployment because people don’t have the right skills.
In richer countries, demographics change as more workers retire, and economic restructuring as workers become displaced by technology and globalization.
It’s a must now to improve skills. It is not just about a better match of skills and jobs but what kind of economic environment is needed to achieve a more high-skilled equilibrium.
Higher education systems and institutions are under pressure to reform to provide adequate skills and knowledge for the evolving labor markets. It’s a compulsion now to improve upon the quality of higher education to make employability an outcome to the university courses.
Higher education must diversify in the direction of skill building with a right mix of vocational skills that serve the labor market and higher-end research graduates that can fuel innovation for economic growth.
Consulting firm McKinsey & Company dissects the reasons behind what it calls the “twin crises of a shortage of jobs and a shortage of skills” designed last year. The courses must be devised to make graduates more in demand, indulge in effective education and contribute to the supply market directly which can be an integrated, consolidated program.
UNESCO’s release in May on Education and Skills for Inclusive and Sustainable Development beyond 2015 notes that, “the most recent developments in the knowledge society and the subsequent changes in the world of work at the global level are raising skill/qualifications requirements for job entry and subsequently demand for a more knowledgeable and skilled workforce”.
Without the right skills, people languish on the benchmarks of society, technological progress doesn’t translate into economic growth, and countries can’t compete in today’s economies.
McKinsey report found that 53% of Indian employers were unable to fill entry-level vacancies mainly because new graduates lacked the right skills.
All premier institutions and universities must try and incorporate in courses and programs that build competencies for the graduates and make them more employable in the market. The shift in the structural change must bring out the following changes:
- Employment Basics
- Recession Proofing
- Technical Careers
- Job Flexibility
- Skill Development
- College Resources
To unlock the full potential of education as a driver for growth and jobs, our country must pursue reforms to boost both the performance and efficiency of the education system. The focus must be on the skills that make a different to the society and economy on the whole.
-Smita Dutta
iMET Global
iMET Academy 
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