Need of the Hour: Career Guidance & Career Planning in India

Indian Education has many issues to deal with. Since the year 1835 the British started tinkering with the India’s traditional education system of ‘Guru shyshya’ which was value based and focussed on outcome and application of learning.

The new age education came into being with schools and colleges being set up across India.

In 1948 when the Radhakrishnan Commission was set up with an intention of designing a new National University Education Policy of free India, the commission stressed on the outcome of education into social, economic and cultural goals of the nation.

Dr S Radhakrishnan in his words said:

“The most important and urgent reform needed in education is to transform it, to endeavor to relate it to the life, needs and aspirations of the people and thereby make it the powerful instrument of social, economic and cultural transformation necessary for the realization of the national goals. For this purpose, education should be developed so as to increase productivity, achieve social and national integration, accelerate the process of modernization and cultivate social, moral and spiritual values.” ⁵

Since 1956 Commissions and committees were set up to deal with non-implementation of earlier recommendations and identifying gaps in the Education system.

On the ground, apart from introducing little new regulatory compliance there were no major changes that could be effected towards building outcome of education to the social, economic and cultural goals of the country.

In reality the focus of higher education always has been away from the outcome and application to just input based education. Outcome here means the education resulting in either economic growth or increased capability of the learner.

Unfortunately today education has minimal relevance to occupation, passion, interest of the individual learner. The age old beliefs have created havoc in making a choice of education. The aspirational needs, abilities and interest of the individual have been ignored. This has led to non-compatibility, career failures, drop outs and unemployables.

Today the youth do not value higher education. They acquire degrees with no connection to their occupations they would like to pursue. This is visible with higher un-employability and unemployment in the country. Hence, the gross enrolment ratios and dropout rates are far from desired.

The government is doing all it can to improve access of education. It’s a known fact that 73% of the population lives in rural India, however 90% of the educational institutes are in urban India ⁶. I believe that it’s a superficial measure of increasing enrolments.

 

Towards Valuing Higher Education

The youth of India will value education only when they see benefits that result in their social, economic and personal growth. There needs to be sustained effort on helping the youth realize their potential and guide them into the right education which will lead them into a career that satisfying yet economically fulfilling.

Today 98% of young boys and 96% of young girls are confused while making a career decision⁷. The confusion is due to the lack of information and skill for making career decisions. This confusion drives them into making unfocussed investments of time, effort and money into education that may or may not deliver returns.

A scientific career guidance process with a reliable information base on education and career would transform the current scenario.

Guiding the student into taking up education that would lead to a career that’s compatible to his or her personal abilities, passion, interests, values and personality, would never let the interest levels in education diminish. Moreover, research tells us that students who are able to understand and internalize the connections between school and work will be more actively engaged in their academic tasks and will be more likely to succeed in high school ⁸

 

^{Excerpts from the paper ‘Relooking at the Indian Education System” Published by Anand Desai, Founder Dheya (www.dheya.com ), A complete Career Guidance and Planning Company.}

Technorati Tags: Career Guidance,Career Development,Career Planning. Indian Education System.

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A TIME BOMB waiting to burst :Education VS Employability

While reading TOI, I am really concerned with the future of our education system. Let me explain ..In a place called Solan a PhD, an MBA and many one have registered under NREGA. What's NREGA?? Its National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Every unemployed citizen in the rural area in entitled to employment under this act. The only difference is the work in more on the manual side like digging roads, pits etc..

This raises some tough questions. With the HR managers and the India Inc always shouting on top of their voice that – there are NO GOOD PEOPLE…where have all the good people gone??

While the education system is churning out PhDs, MBA, Masters, and Bachelors like a mass manufacturing products, the utility and the quality of those products are in question?? … Mr Sibal, Mr. education minister are you listening?? Tough Mr. Sibal has taken some great steps in reforming education, he needs to look at more of OUTPUT or RESULT oriented education policy.

With new education bill passing in the parliament, its even funny, the government has legitimised the private education system. Now these people are free to charge what ever they what without being accountable for the quality of education. Today, where the students and the parents invest on an average Rs 8 Lakhs for an engineering degree, Rs. 25 Lakhs for a medical degree and Rs.7 Lakhs for an MBA. The whole of investment is done for supposedly the better future of their kid, and when the kind lands into a job that pays miniscule salary and offers him a menial job, the onus of kids success is dumped solely on the student.

While making sales calls I happened to be meeting the President and the Owner of a large education society which has approx 35000 students studying in it. I was made to wait for 2 hours and then an arrogant chief of the institution arrived, he called us inside. It was admission time, this man from any angle did not look like an educationist but called himself Prof. He said he is very busy, so we waited. He had people walking in and out of his room. TO everyone he was quoting a figure.. if you need admissions, 3 lakhs for this campus, 2 lakhs for another and 1.5 lakhs for a distant campus… ALL IN CASH, no receipt , plus fees..??

People with no background in education are owners of large education institutions. Obviously there is no education imparted in colleges.. hence the business of coaching classes is booming. I fail to differentiate between the college and coaching class of tutorial classes.. both have the same number of student yet people go for it.

Ultimately… only 23% MBA are employable, 15% of grads are employable… majority take menial jobs.. and India as a nation is moving towards a HIGHLY QUALIFIED UNEMPLOYABLE nation with LOW PRODUCTIVITY???

Apart from their brilliant academic track records Ankit Chaudhary, Rajinder Rana, Anchal, Devi, Anjali and a bunch of others like them in Nauni, a picturesque town nestled in Solan, 45 km from Shimla, have one more thing in common. They are all workers labouring under NREGA.

“Some work is better than no work,’’ said Ankit, a PhD from the prestigious Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan. “And work is worship. Haven’t we been taught that? Moreover, I think all of us have another agenda in that NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) funds should keep flowing into our village and should never ever be returned unutilized.’’

Its time we wake up and do something about it…. its a TIME BOMB waiting to burst

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The Challenge...my first large scale social initiative at Rajur, Dist Ahmednagar

At Rajur..150+ Km from Pune, a group of 4000+ tribal and youth waiting for an opportunity of life. As i thought when i went to Rajur for the first time, it was with an idea that we would do a career development program in a beautiful tribal school.But later realised its not about career development at all. Building Careers is just far from our imagination and its about un employable youth. The problem of un-employability is far deeper than what it looks like from outside.

The tribal and the local kids learn in the local Ashram School, highly subsidised, fully residential. After the tenth grade they are supposed to leave a protected Ashram school to fetch higher education for themselves. Now it really a test of their sustainability.. on one side the pressure to earn their living and the other to study. Invariably each one of them lands into a college to do Arts, after few days unable to pay up 50% drop out. and lack of confidence and opportunity leaves them with menial job or no jobs...

Decided to do some thing...something that would make an impact. Went back to Pune, worked on a program and returned with a unique program to develop these young people.

The belief was they had enough potential...they had enough intelligence, what they did not have is confidence.. decided to test my beliefs..

We conducted the culture fair ravens intelligence test on the pilot batch of 140 students and to our surprise we found 24 students above the 75 percentile.

38 between 60 to 75 percentile. and the rest below 60 percentile. Said need to work on them, and then the pilot batch was launched. We said its the SEVEN steps to being employable...

ITS NOT THAT THE SHORTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES.. ITS THE BIG IRON SCREEN OF THE JOB MARKET THAT DEMANDS SOFT SKILLS MORE THAN THE ACADEMIC AND PROCESS SKILLS TO GET EMPLOYED...We are focusing on this challenge..and hence the design of the program.

Anand Desai

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Employability in India:

Introduction: Employability in India:

1. An operational definition of being employed means having a job, and employable means having the qualities to maintain employment, progress in work place and able to be employed in different work place. From the point of view of the individual, employability skills are the career capital or the learned assets that a person needs to get a job and acquire job specific skills, while on the job. From the point of view of the employers, employability skills are the generic skills, attitudes and behaviours that they require in all their employees. Hence, the employability skills in the point of view of the employer define the requirements to satisfy screening process in the job market.

2. Considering the measures that allow us to check whether a person is employable, there is a general agreement that three types of qualities are important while assessing the employability performance. These are:

a. Key technical and academic skills specific to the job, to great extent academic curriculum prepares the students to gain them. These skills include reading, language/linguistics, and numerical ability, written expression and comprehension and analysis.

b. Process skills: Unlike the key technical and academic skills, process skills need to be demonstrated on the work. These are problem solving ability, creativity, decision making, technological readiness (IT literacy), business understanding, skills that make one employable etc.

c. Life Skills: In addition to the ability to carry out the task, an employer looks for the qualities of self-confidence, communication skills, self-control, self- esteem, social skills, basic values, adaptability, flexibility, willingness to learn, emotional intelligence, stress tolerance, punctuality, efficiency and effectiveness. These qualities are very much embedded with the personality type of the individual.

3. There are either no strategies/actions or limited strategies/actions to address the issue of LIFE SKILLS which has lead to higher rate un-employability. Unfortunately life skill services remain poorly developed and accessible only to very limited numbers of young people in India. Moreover life skill development initiatives have been focused towards the existing work force, those who have left the education system than upon the student population in the education system or the drop-outs.

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