Industry picking up the slack from ‘failing’ HE – Tharoor

By Alya Mishra. India’s higher education system is failing graduates by not teaching them the skills that would make them employable, and the gap is being filled by industry, new Minister of State for Education Shashi Tharoor said on Monday in his first public speech since being assigned to the ministry in a wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle.
“What is one of the unreported stories of the employment market [in India] is that companies like Tata and Infosys are actually hiring people they do not consider to be at par and then training them,” Tharoor said at a higher education conference in New Delhi organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, FICCI.
“These companies have set up campuses to make up for the education deficiencies of [the] qualified graduates they hire…our education system simply isn’t producing enough well-educated graduates to meet the needs of Indian companies today, let alone for their planned growth tomorrow,” Tharoor told the two-day gathering of academics, industry leaders and international delegates, which began on 5 November. More...