Is a college education not for everyone in India?

Bibek Debroy, an Indian economist and polymath, passed away in early November. The former chair of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC), Debroy was known to be outspoken and often raised uncomfortable and controversial issues.

One of his last op-eds – published posthumously – was a case in point. “I don’t think higher education is for everyone,” he wrote.

In other countries, similar opinions have been voiced for quite some time – not least by academics themselves. The American economist Bryan Caplan, for instance, made a compelling argument against traditional education in his 2018 book The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Elon Musk has also described college as “overrated” and “basically for fun”.

Yet in India, the idea that higher education is not for everyone is tantamount to blasphemy. More than 43 million young people attend college, and their numbers keep growing because parents and students believe that it improves their life chances. Moreover, India’s gross enrolment ratio (GER) is still relatively low, at just over 30 per cent of eligible young people, so there would seem to be plenty of scope for further expansion.

But Debroy’s thinking is not to be dismissed lightly. After all, as he noted, “there is an indisputable lack of correlation in India between higher education and skills the market values”.

This surfaces in two ways. First, there is a gap between the requirements of employers and the choices that students make about what to study. For example, while India may be known as the “land of engineers”, only 11.8 per cent of undergraduates are enrolled in engineering and technology programmes and less than 15 per cent in science. This was true historically, too.

Even more importantly, there is a gap between the skills required by employers in disciplines such as engineering or management and the actual skills of the graduates. This is evident from data on employability. According to a recent survey, only 44 per cent of graduates possess the necessary skills for technical positions. The result is that India’s youth unemployment rate in 2022 was nine times higher for graduates than for those who could not read or write.

Another doubt about university education relates to its cost. In his op-ed, Debroy noted that “a lot of higher education is paid for by debt, typically taken by a parent and not the child. It isn’t unusual for a family to sell a home to finance education.”

The financial burden of college education – which has become greater and greater over time – did not sit well with Debroy. He gave the example of a lower middle-income father he knows who still supports his college-educated son while the latter continues to look for a job commensurate with his expectations.

The ranks of India’s educated but unemployed youth are ever-expanding, while their families are left with large amounts of debt or greatly diminished assets. Yet the idea that a college degree opens new doors is deeply ingrained in the minds of Indian students and parents alike. Few are buying the idea that a college degree might not be for them. Quite the opposite.

The government, too, has sought to increase college enrolment. Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan recently reiterated that India has set the target to increase its GER to 50 per cent by 2030.

Students and, particularly, parents are certainly concerned about the rising cost of education, but that is not enough to deter them. And while students should be concerned about the low employability and high unemployment figures, the enrolment numbers indicate that they are not.

Debroy argued that college should be only “for those who possess merit”. But the larger problem for India perhaps is not of too many meritless young people seeking a college education but of the merit of that education.

In the coming years, policymakers will need to do better in both nudging more young people towards vocational training and improving the overall quality of schools, colleges and universities alike. Fully implementing 2020’s New Education Policy would be a good place to start.

Pushkar is director of The International Centre Goa.