By Prof Jitendra Kumar Mishra
Reimagining Skilling for Viksit Bharat – The NITI Aayog Report 2026 provides an important diagnosis of the Education, Skill, and Employment nexus. It reports that only about 8.25% of graduates are employed in jobs aligned with their qualifications, unemployment rate is 13% among graduates and 20.4% among graduate women; more than 2 crore of India’s 3.4 crore undergraduate students are enrolled in B.A., B.Sc. and B.Com. programmes, many of which have relatively weak direct linkages with employment. These numbers exhibit a multilayered gap in education and skilling, leading to unemployment of the youth in the country.
At the first place, only 8.25% of graduates being employed in jobs aligned with their qualifications, and 53.52% of graduates being employed below the skill level associated with their qualifications (Economic Survey 2024-25) highlights the disconnect between qualifications and employment which includes both capability gap and opportunity gap. Further, India’s overall employment indicators have improved considerably. The all-person unemployment rate fell from 6.0% in 2017–18 to 3.2% in 2022–23 and remained at 3.2% in 2023–24, while the Worker Population Ratio increased from 46.8% to 58.2%. However, this does not necessarily mean that the degree–employment mismatch has been solved, which is a paradox.Heavily concentrated enrolment in generic undergraduate programmes, with B.A., B.Sc. and B.Com together accounting for more than two crore students, should not be interpreted simply as evidence that conventional degrees have become irrelevant. The problem is more nuanced. A broad academic degree can provide intellectual foundations, critical thinking and adaptability; however, when it is not connected to occupational capabilities, applied knowledge and opportunities for work experience, its signalling value in the labour market becomes weak. Also, the charm of government jobs in India still prevails, and a significant number of graduates with conventional degrees such as B.A., B.Sc. and B.Com aspire to these jobs. The inconsistent recruitment pattern, longer time taken to complete the recruitment process, high application-to-vacancy ratio, and low success rate lead to limited career options and suboptimal choices for graduates who fail to get government jobs. Thus, such graduates are compelled to accept the available job, compromising their qualifications and capability.Structural gap and disconnect between curriculum and industry
The report rightly identifies rigid curricula, generic degrees and inadequate industry alignment as major structural weaknesses. It recommends moving from generic degrees towards applied, job-linked specialisations within the programmes—for example, B.Com with Financial Analytics, Digital Accounting and Taxation, Banking and Financial Services, Business Intelligence, Digital Marketing, or Entrepreneurship and Family Business. B.A. in Public Policy, Digital Communication, Tourism and Hospitality, Social Research, Logistics or Community Development. A B.Sc. programme could offer applied pathways in Data Analytics, Environmental Technology, Laboratory Applications, Geospatial Technologies etc. The caution is not to vocationalise every degree or replace academic learning with narrow occupational training. That would create another form of mismatch by producing graduates who may be trained for today’s jobs but lack the intellectual adaptability required for tomorrow’s economy.
Every single academic programme should be required to articulate its potential occupational and career pathways. This does not mean that every degree must prepare students for one specific job. Rather, universities should be able to demonstrate how disciplinary knowledge can translate into a range of occupations and further-learning pathways. National Education Policy 2020(NEP 2020), through Outcome-Based Education and the National Credit Framework (NCrF), provides a detailed process of curriculum development, including periodic programme reviews using labour-market intelligence, employer feedback, alumni progression, placement data, emerging occupational trends and regional economic priorities. It also recommends meaningful representation from industry, professional bodies, alumni and practitioners in the Boards of Studies of the Programme to co-design curriculum and learning outcomes. The adoption of the NEP 2020 is likely to bridge the structural gap in curriculum and strengthen industry connect, provided the academic institutions implement it in its right spirit.
Missing bridge between universities and skilling institutions
The education and skilling ecosystems still operate too often as parallel structures. Universities offer degrees. ITIs offer vocational training. Polytechnics provide diplomas. Training Partners offer short-term courses. Industry provides workplace learning. Yet learners often struggle to move between these pathways despite the National Credit Framework (NCrF) providing equivalence of credits earned through academic programmes, vocational training, apprenticeships, internships and workplace learning.
The central challenge is therefore no longer simply one of access to education or skilling. It is a challenge of alignment between what individuals study, what they can actually do, what employers require and what the economy is likely to need in the future. The NITI Aayog report Reimagining Skilling for Viksit Bharat@2047 argues that India’s skilling architecture needs to move from fragmented, supply-driven interventions towards a learner-centred, lifelong and outcome-oriented system. Its central proposition is compelling – skilling must not remain a parallel system outside mainstream education but must become part of a continuum connecting education, skills, work and lifelong learning.
Gap in skilling programmes and employability
India has invested substantially in skilling. The report notes that more than 7.67 crore individuals have been formally trained since 2014–15, while ₹34,000 crores were allocated across key Central Ministries for skilling-related expenditure in 2025–26. Yet the report also acknowledges that outcomes remain uneven. The thrust of the Government on skilling and budget allocation for the same has led to the mushrooming of Training Centres in the country. National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET) and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) are empowered to set the quality standards and ensure quality throughout the lifecycle of a skilling program. However, the report highlights that these trainings have not translated adequately into employment. Quality assurance is arguably the area that requires the greatest strengthening. A skill certificate has value only when employers trust what it represents. Therefore, the quality of a skill programme cannot be established merely through provider accreditation or course completion. The report appropriately recommends moving from enrolment-driven financing towards outcome-linked financing, with indicators such as verified placement, wage improvement and sustained employment to improve skilling effectiveness.
Need for a national workforce intelligence and data-sharing system
At present, information on employment, skills, vacancies, apprenticeships, training programmes, institutional capacity and workforce requirements is dispersed across ministries, States, institutions and private platforms. The NITI Aayog report proposes a Skills Digital Registry and Exchange (Skills DX) that can bring together scheme records, enrolment data, jobs data and beneficiary information and connect them with systems such as e-Shram, UDISE+, National Career Service, apprenticeship portals and EPFO.
This architecture should be developed further into a National Workforce Intelligence and Skills Observatory and should provide regularly updated information on – sector-wise workforce requirements, occupation-wise job demand, emerging occupations, skills required for specific occupations, regional and district-level employment demand, vacancies and anticipated vacancies, apprenticeship and internship opportunities, wage levels and career progression, skills in shortage and skills becoming obsolete, graduate supply by discipline, and employment outcomes of different academic and skilling programmes.
The critical shift needs to be from planning education according to historical enrolment patterns to planning capabilities according to current and projected economic demand. For example, if a region is emerging as a logistics, semiconductor, renewable-energy, healthcare, tourism or manufacturing hub, universities and skilling institutions in that region should have access to credible workforce intelligence before deciding the scale and nature of their programmes.
Thus, India must move from education as credential acquisition to education as capability development; from curriculum as content coverage to curriculum as capability architecture; from internships as formalities to integrate work as learning; from certification as an endpoint to employment and progression as outcomes; and from institutions competing for enrolments to institutions being accountable for learner success.
For Viksit Bharat@2047, the decisive transformation will therefore be from degrees to demonstrable capabilities. A developed India will not be built merely by producing more graduates or training more people. It will be built by creating a generation that can learn, apply, adapt, innovate, work and create employment.
– The author is the Vice Chancellor & Registrar JAIN (Deemed-to-be University)
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETEducation does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETEducation will not be responsible for any damage caused to any person or organisation directly or indirectly.
