Placement Guarantee: Reality vs Myth

 

I just read this news headline on Google news feed, Indian workers rescued from job scams in Southeast Asia - India's government says it has rescued about 130 Indian workers from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos after they were lured by agents for fake job opportunities in the information technology sector in Thailand - Read more.

 

This may seem like a news report of something that happened far away from India. But what about the scams that go on in the name of buying courses with the promise of that elusive job guarantee? 

 

Let us begin by understanding a bit of the background story here. What’s really at play is very different from what it seems like. Indians always follow the fad, or fashion, or craze. Today it is IT, it was chemical engineering, chartered accountancy and a MBA at some point in time. The secret sauce to success, migration to the U.S and Canada, people actually being foolhardy enough to brave death for a life in a foreign land. With over a Billion and a half people in the country and limited government support and opportunities, no wonder competition is killing, literally. 

 

The academic system, because it simply isn’t education, I gotta call it academic, was designed to churn out babus for the English, and the tradition continues. The only way out of abject poverty and deprivation is seen by many as getting EDUCATED.

 

The next steps are: 

 

1. A government job (IAS / IPS, to be sold off to the highest bidder, this is where the actual corruption commences)

 

2. IIT (Can’t crack the test, let me hang myself)

 

3. IIM 

 

4. Medicine (Cannot take the routine stress, or being ragged, let me hang myself)

 

5. Engineering (Can’t stop laughing) 

 

6. Get a foreign degree or even better migrate 

 

What I intend for you to do as a reader is to begin to examine each of the above options, objectively without getting emotional about it. 

 

Given the sheer size of the population, any exam is tough to rank high on. Then the race begins. 

 

If the farce of education wasn’t enough, came along the coaching classes. This billion dollar industry, and the subsequent wave EdTech in India, rides on the inner insecurity and fear of the Indian parent, what IF my child misses out. 

 

Every year the profiteering institutions churn out young men and women, doomed at the very beginning of their journey, into an even competitive market that demands a set of skills that are totally ABSENT in the institutions of higher education. 

 

There was a research conducted and the report was published that in a single line states that 80% of engineering graduates in India are UNEMPLOYABLE as freshers. Here’s the Business Today link for your cynical soul:

 

IIT: For a little over 15,000 seats, almost a Millions aspirants compete. Last year the figure was 9,00,000. 

 

The rest land up in one of the thousands of engineering colleges, and they aren’t even a consolation prize as the article above clearly suggests. 

 

For the sake of brevity, it's the same with all of the other preferred career options. But what’s next for all of these students when they GRADUATE?

 

What follows is a series of painstaking years spent gaining and gathering some much needed REAL world experience. The mediocrity of a survival or existence based living has taken over by then, one accepts the judgement of fate.

 

Indians take great pride in all of the MNC CEOs being of Indian origin. To set the record straight none of them are Indian citizens any longer. 

 

Given that it isn’t a secret anymore that your college education won’t really land you a job, the private sector or enterprises have taken on the mantle of offering short term courses that they offer with a placement guarantee, 100% placement assistance, assured placement support and more such terms. 

 

The EdTech boom has only made this more public or open as these terms already existed in the educational lexicon long before the internet took over. Back in the days it was the hardware and air purser courses that came with 100% placement. 

While it is a much needed support for the students who are left with no other option by the institutions of higher education that failed them, a lot of gullible aspirants are often taken for a ride. 

 

A company that offers a course with fancy terms of providing job search support is in effect a recruitment firm in the guise of an educational institution. Nothing wrong given they do deliver on this promise more often than not, there will always be shady characters in the industry that bring home disrepute to education. A recent case was that of a Billion dollar EdTech company, that is surviving on VC money purely out of dream selling a future that is both uncertain and fairly tale-like as is the government promising THE GOOD DAYS. Without naming either (A quick Google search will spill the beans), there is an old Gujarati saying that roughly translates to say “A city where people are greedy, scamsters running ponzi schemes never go hungry.”

 

With a bittersweet memory of how education used to be, and in prayer that better sense shall prevail at some point, I rest my case. 

 

We at Panandro are committed to make education and especially skill building, doable and affordable for everybody. If you or your friend / family are interested in learning Full Stack, Data Science or Digital marketing, we are happy to be of support to you.