Tertiary Education Sector in India

The other day I heard this talk on NDTV.com where Union HRD Minister- Kapil Sibal, host of Indian IT company CEOs, and individuals involved in the education industry were talking about the Indian demographic dividend and what it meant for India.

Kapil Sibal made a point about number of graduates India produces. He said that for every 100 citizens in the age group of 18-24 (young adults), only 13 Indians go to college. The corresponding number for developed world is around 40.

He further contended that given Indian’s large young population, there is an opportunity for Indians to constitute around 25 % of global workforce by 2022. But this would require massive improvements in tertiary education rate (%age of young adult population that goes to and graduates from college).

The numbers Sibal talked about seemed alarming. I was not sure what to make of it. For a start, is 13 % tertiary education rate – good, bad, superb, or ugly?

Average tertiary education rate for the world is 30 %. Developed countries are at much higher levels – around 50-60%. Let us assume that the average tertiary education rate for developed world is 50%.

The country with the 3^rd largest population in the world is USA- 312 mn. Most other developed countries in world are around 100 mn mark. Let us take the average population figure for developed world to be 150 mn (I am approximating on the higher side here).

Around 60% of developed world’s population is in working age (18-59 years). Hence number of graduates in working age from a developed country is = 150*0.6*0.5 = 45 million.

Around 55% of India is in working age (18-59 years). Hence number of graduates in working age from India is = 1210*0.13*0.55 = 86 million approx.

In pure numbers India has a larger graduate population than most developed world countries have. But does that mean we can do without improving our tertiary education rate? Indian Government is targeting getting the tertiary education rate to around 30%. I think there is a good enough reason for us to work on this immediately.

China’s made immense strides in education. Their tertiary education rate is 28%. Hence their number of graduates in working age (18-59) bracket = 1339*0.28*0.6 = 224 million. Number of graduates in China is 3 times number of graduates in India! That’s something Indian education policy makers should be concerned about.

There’s also another employment related figure that stands out. Skilled workers (those who have come up through the vocational training system) in India constitute 2% of workforce. If you were to ask parents in India “Would you want your son/daughter to be an engineer or a technician?”, the answer you would get would in all cases be – ‘Engineer, obviously!’. Skilled workers in certain developed countries constitute significant proportion of working population – South Korea (land of Samsung, LG, Hyundai, KIA, Daewoo, etc): 96%; Japan – 80%; Germany (famous for it’s apprenticeship system of training)-75%; UK – 68%. I hear Singapore, Switzerland, and Austria also have evolved vocational training facilities which are sources for significant proportion of working population.

All the above mentioned countries have per capita incomes significantly higher than that of India’s. I wonder why India has not aggressively pursued the vocational training system to meet its talent/manpower needs.

It is obvious that India’s young population would cater to growing demand for manpower across the world. But the larger question is ‘What quality of jobs would they get into?’. That in turn is a determinant of what skills would working age Indians bring into the market. There does seem to be a lot of work to do in secondary and tertiary education sector in India.

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Sourav