47% Indian graduates unemployable: Aspiring Minds study

47% graduates in India are not employable for any industry role according to a latest report by Aspiring Minds, India’s Leading Employability Solutions Company. The report is a first ever national audit of employability of 3-year Bachelor’s Degree graduates.

The NER, Graduates (Annual Report 2013) draws inferences from data of over 60000 graduates pan –India, based on Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT).

–Some highlights:

47% graduates not employable in any sector of the knowledge economy

The employability of graduates varies from 2.59% in functional roles such as accounting, to 15.88% in sales related roles and 21.37% for roles in the business process outsourcing (BPO/ITeS) sector. A significant proportion of graduates, nearly 47%, were found not employable in any sector, given their English language and cognitive skills. Since a graduation degree is considered a pathway to a job in the knowledge economy, substantive intervention at school and college level is needed to improve basic skills of students. Next, a renewed focus on vocational training is timely now and should be re-emphasized.

Employability varies from role to role based on varying degrees of proficiency required in language and cognitive skills

For an analyst role, close to 84% graduates were found to lack the right levels in cognitive ability. 90% graduates did not have required proficiency in English communication. As a result less than 3% of India’s graduates remain unemployable across different job profiles.These numbers change dramatically for a teaching role or a sales or support role in the industry.

Over 40% employable graduates are beyond the top 30% colleges and have no way to signal their employability to potential recruiters

41% of graduates employable in accounting roles hail from colleges beyond the top 30% colleges, whereas for the IT services sector this percentage is 36%. Despite being employable, these students have no way to signal their employability to recruiters who end up recruiting only from reputed colleges and universities. Not only does this beget economic inefficiency, but brings in unfairness for the student. The need of the hour is to develop effective means to 'discover' employable students easily across the nation. Employability Certification such as AMCAT is one such proven scalable mechanism.

Commenting on the findings of the report, Varun Aggarwal, co-founder and CTO, Aspiring Minds, said, “In line with our commitment to review higher education in India, Aspiring Minds continues to work on assessing the employability of hundreds of thousands of young Indians. This study is a first of its kind for 3-year degree graduates across India evaluating employability for major roles being offered by Industry. The alarming statistics of nearly half of the country’s graduates not being employable in the knowledge economy needs great attention with interventions at both the school and higher education levels”

Methodology:
This report is based on AMCAT conducted on a sample of more than 60,000 graduation students from numerous colleges across multiple states in India. All these graduates shall graduate in 2013. The analysis and findings of this report are based on the performance of these students in different modules of AMCAT, India’s largest and only standardized employability test. The modules are adaptive and their scoring is based on Item Response. Theory, a globally recognized statistical technique for assessing high stake exams. The test was conducted under a proctored and credible environment ensured by Aspiring Minds.