Skills Development for Youth in India:
Challenges and Opportunities
SUCCESS STORIES
Challenges Facing Skills Development Efforts
Today, youth in developing countries who are seeking work face great difficulty. First, in the glo-
balized era, competition has intensified among firms and industries, requiring them to improve the
efficiency and quality of their products and services. This forces them to hire fewer, but more skilled,
workers. Thus, the entry requirements for youth seeking work have become higher and tougher. Sec-
ond, the global economic crises and other trends have led firms and industries to engage in massive
restructuring, resulting in fewer new job openings and growing unemployment, particularly among
youth. Globally, some 200 million people are unemployed, including 75 million under
age 25 (World Bank 2012a). Third, technological change, particularly the development of informa-
tion and communication technology (ICT), is occurring at unprecedented speed, requiring workers to
have more, and more complex, cognitive skills than ever. Moreover, the global economy is increas-
ingly becoming “knowledge-based” (OECD 1997), demanding a higher intensity of knowledge and
skills to do one’s job. Fourth, global labor markets are becoming increasingly casualized and flexible
(Standing 1999). Firms are adopting more flexible employment practices. An increased proportion of
workers, especially new to the labor market, must now work as casual labor, without job security and
stable career prospects. Finally, because more people are migrating across national borders seeking
work, youth from developing countries are increasingly exposed to global labor markets, competing
even with workers outside their own countries who offer more knowledge, skills, qualifications, or
competencies, or for lower wages.
Education and Training Opportunities for Indian Youth
Within the formal education system, some 350,000 to 400,000 secondary students are enrolled in
vocational education. Vocational education accounts for less than 3% ofs the 14 million students in
grades 11 and 12 (Asian Development Bank 2008). Following the 1986 National Policy of Education,
the government has planned to make 25% of secondary education vocational. So far, however, it has
not succeeded (World Bank 2012b, p. 200). In addition, since 1988, the government has attempted
to promote “vocationalization” of secondary education. Vocationalization aims to diversify educa-
tional opportunities by introducing some vocational streams into general secondary education, to
make graduates more employable and to provide an alternative path for those pursuing higher edu-
cation. Since then, 9,619 vocational secondary schools have also been created offering 150 courses,
to accommodate about 1 million students (GOI 2008b). These efforts, however, are still very small,
accounting for only 4.8% of total enrollments in higher secondary education
At the higher education level, the number of institutions has increased, with a rapid increase in private
colleges. As of 2009/10, India had 350 universities and 24,560 colleges, including 2,894 engineering
and technology colleges (see Table 6). In addition, it has 41institutes of national importance, includ-
ing the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), Science (IISc.), and Management (IIM), with campuses
located in several locations in different regions. Entry into these prestigious institutions is extremely
competitive. In addition, 1,274 polytechnics as well as colleges offer diploma-level courses to train
future technicians and supervisors. And, the government has recently proposed establishing 1,000
polytechnics, some run by state governments, and some through public-private partnerships
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