More courses and certifications won’t fix India’s skills gap |
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More courses and certifications won’t fix India’s skills gap
Expectations need recalibration. Students equate degrees with employability, employers expect instant productivity, policymakers push curriculum mandates — all reinforce a flawed assumption.
The “skills gap” has become a familiar concern in discussions on higher education and employability in India. Employers point to a shortage of job-ready graduates, while universities have responded by revising curricula, adding certifications, and increasing industry engagement. Yet despite these efforts, the gap persists.
The India Skills Report 2026 shows that even as employability scores across domains have improved, a significant share of graduates continue to fall short of employer expectations. The report notes that 77 per cent of employers find it difficult to fill roles in sectors such as IT, engineering, and healthcare.
This persistence suggests that the problem might be misdiagnosed.
The dominant view is that graduates lack the right skills because educational institutions are not teaching them effectively. But this overlooks a more fundamental issue: the gap between education and employment is not merely a failure of execution; it reflects a structural feature of how modern education systems are designed.
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Formal education is built around the transmission of generalisable knowledge. Students learn principles, frameworks, and analytical tools that can be applied across contexts. What education cannot fully provide is exposure to the wide range of contextual challenges that shape real-world work. These environments are complex, dynamic, and often unpredictable. No curriculum, however well designed, can anticipate every situation a graduate will encounter.
This limitation is not unique to India; it is inherent to formal education. Debates around skills gaps recur in developed countries such as the United States, Germany, and Australia.
In pre-modern economies, including India, skills were acquired through apprenticeships within stable occupational systems. Individuals trained for years under practitioners, mastering specific tasks in relatively unchanging contexts. Learning and application were tightly coupled, leaving little room for a “skills gap.”
Modern economies operate differently. The rise of scientific........