India along with China and United States of America is the third largest education system in the world and soon it will become the second biggest after China. The talent coming out of the Indian education system is a source not just for India any more, but for most parts of the world, because of its vast and growing pool of young talent entering/ready to enter the workforce, coz of high English language ability and willingness of many to immigrate – India has become a critical source of talent for the world – especially the USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Gulf countries, Australia and New Zealand (countries with a fast ageing population and facing a severe shortage of skilled and talented workforce).

In my earlier Blog Post, dated March, 24th, 2013, I had mentioned that, 50% of its population below the age of 25 years and 65% below 35 years, makes India’s a young nation. Also other studies and forecasts suggest that by 2030, India is and will be the only large country with the youngest, agile and a vast workforce – while others would be facing a severe crisis on having a young and an agile workforce. Hence the dependence of the world on the Indian talent pool is only going to grow during the next two decades.

Taking the above in context, what should be the biggest worry for India and the world? The worrying reality for India and the parts of the world that depend on Indian talent pool should be that – today in India only 10% of 150,000 MBA graduates (graduating every year) from the 3300 MBA schools of India are found employable (Source:  http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/12/12/study-less-than-10-indian-mbas-employable/ ). Similarly another research report suggests that out of 500,000 engineers that graduate annually only 17.45% of them are found to be employable in IT service sector, while a dismal 3.51% are trained or educated well to be deployed on projects directly. Further only 2.68% are found to be employable by the IT Product companies. (Source: National Employability Report – Engineers by Aspiring Minds, 2009). Scary isn’t it? No wonders why many Indian and foreign IT companies have to spend so much money on re-training and skilling-up these graduates before deploying them. Top-tier schools, which train and educate their students well, are so much in demand, that most of their students are recruited way before they graduate. May come a day when companies will try to recruit from these top schools as soon as students are admitted!!

The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, earlier this year highlighted a fact and said that, despite having such a vast education system not a single Indian University is one amongst the top 200 Universities of the world. He called for a drastic action for bringing in education reforms in India. (Source: http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/president-calls-for-drastic-action-to-reform-higher-education-system/article4598505.ece )

Whilst doing my research for the third and pending part of my Blog Post – “Part 3 – What MBA Schools must do to design and make internships more valuable” I found these facts which, I was kind of aware – based on interactions, casual discussions and piecemeal reading. But, I must say, after having researched and studied in-depth I am totally taken aback and have realized how serious the situation is. I couldn’t stop myself from writing this blog, which will be a good pre-cursor to my third and concluding part of my earlier series. In that blog, I will try to discuss, why are we in this situation, what the practical issues are and what must the MBA schools do (within their area of influence) to improve and make a solid contribution in raising the bar of education and training and allowing students to learn and develop the required skills.

I must say, am impressed by the research reports published by Aspiring Minds a Talent research, analytics and assessment company based out of Gurgaon (near Delhi) in India. The reports are available for free on their website:  http://www.aspiringminds.in/researchcell/whitepapers.html and I find them very useful. Their research methodology states that, employability benchmark in a profile and sector is defined by a theoretical understanding and empirical validation of English language ability + knowledge + cognitive skills + soft skills + domain expertise required.  As a designer of workforces and recruiter of fresh talent, I find this definition very practical and aligned to reality. Also their large and geographically spread sample make the report very credible  for me.

Now very soon, I will also publish my next Blog Post, which is the last part of the continuing series, will finalize it tomorrow night on my long haul flight to Amsterdam.