Employability and Higher Education in India: An Empirical Analysis of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Uttar Pradesh is one of the highest youth populated state of India and the greater challenge of the state is to prepare our larger lot of the educated graduates from the common education streams for the emerging skills requirements of employable youth. The key objective of the present paper is to explore the common perception of higher education graduates about their education for their realistic lives and also investigate the relationship between higher education and employability in Uttar Pradesh. Employability in higher education graduates is a key concept and often used to assess the quality of the university provision; in spite of that employability and employment are the two different concepts. The study is based on secondary as well as primary evidences of employability. The present paper tries to builds a conceptual understanding of employability, relating to definition and measurement and model of employability along with evolving higher education system in Uttar Pradesh. The discussion reveals that the system of higher education in Uttar Pradesh has been changed gradually from government higher institution to private higher education institutions. The evidence also indicates that the traditional education/ program are being transferred towards skill, value added and employability programme/ courses. Moreover, there is a gap between employers’ expectation for higher education and the government’s employability programme. The study suggested that education system in the state must engage its strength for the expansion of higher education system and fuel structural reforms in employment and employability directions. In this direction, career guidance, placement cell, work experience training,  training of new skills development program etc. should be provided by the higher education institutions to the students for enhance the employability.