Despite being world’s youngest country in terms of demographic dividend, India has only 2 percent of the work force skilled, compared with 96 percent in South Korea, 45 percent in China, 50-55 percent in USA and 74 percent in Germany. All these years, we focussed on building Higher Education and very little did we think of enhancing the Employability Quotient (EQ) and produce skilled manpower through skill training Interventions.

Indian Education sector has seen rapid growth in numbers  of  Institutions and students over last  few decades. As per UGC report, in 1950-51 there were some 750 colleges affiliated to 30 Universities, which has grown to over 727 Universities, 35000 colleges and 13000 stand alone Institutions in 2014-15 and counting.

India is poised to be one of skilled nation in coming years and its time for Higher Education & Skill Training to exist in same space with seamless integration as part of curriculum

Regardless of the tremendous growth, higher education has not been proved too efficient to make youths of the country employable as per  need of the employer due to low Skill Quotient (SQ).

In today’s world of Globalisation, Skill Training is an Integral component of Increasing efficiency & productivity for sound economic development of any Economy. In India, it is still at an ascent stage, how ever the demand for skilled man power is huge and to cover this gap, it is very pertinent to re-engineer the skill ecosystem.

As India paves its path to be Global Economic Power house, it is Imperative to equip its working population with Employability skills. Today, India is one of the youngest countries in the world with more than 62 percent of the population in the working age group (15-59years) and more than 54 percent of the total population below 25 years of age.

Skill based learning focuses on Increasing  Employability through series of inputs to

• Equip students with appropriate hands-on skills, which help them to be job- ready.

• Core focus on job role based skills leads to comprehensive specialisation, there by increasing efficacy of the candidate.

Skill Training Interventions raises confidence, Improves productivity and competency of an individual through focused outcome based learning.

In 2014, Skill Development started getting booster from the Govt. under the visionary leadership of our Hon’ble Prime Minister, Shri. Narendra Modi. He encouraged Skill India Mission and also formed Ministry of Skill Development& Entrepreneurship Skill (MSDE) to coordinate all Skill Development activities, capacity & technical/ vocational training frame work building, assessments frame work. The Ministry is dedicated to skill 400 million work force by 2022.

MSDE has launched  Pradhan  Mantri Kaushal  Vikas  Yojana (PMKVY) which is the flagship outcome- based skill training scheme, the objective of this skill certification and reward scheme is to enable & mobilize a large no. of Indian youths to take up outcome based skill training & become employable and earn their live li hood.

National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC)is a central nodal agency under MSDE responsible to build strong skill training capability through funding training partners.

NSDC has been working to define and align all the training nationally under National Skill Qualification Pack(NSQF) as defined in the National Skill Development Policy, which aims at bringing standardised ecosystem well- recognized by the Industry across the Globe.

India is poised to be one of Skilled nation in coming years and it’s time for Higher Education & Skill Training to exists in same space with seamless Integration as part of curriculum. To enable this, it is very important for industry and Academia to work together to generate focused hands- on candidates with right blend of learning and employability traits.