University Technical Colleges: Use these to prepare India's workforce for the future

Mint

3 days ago

The paradox of high growth of unemployment alongside rapid economic growth is one of India's most urgent challenges. Some large employment-intensive and fast-growing sectors like construction, garments, transportation, etc, will help make growth more labour intensive.
However, this can only be a short-run holding operation at best. Most jobs offered in these sectors would be low-skilled, low-paid jobs. It would match the low-skill profile of most entrants to the workforce. Over half of them are not employable, according to employers' organizations. Less than 5% have any certified skills compared to over 70% in most European countries and over 90% in some East Asian economies. This skill profile cannot be changed overnight.
But these are not the kinds of jobs young workers aspire to. Nor is this the workforce we need. In the 21st century, control of emerging technologies and a suitably skilled workforce will be the key determinants of which countries remain competitive and prosperous.
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Unfortunately, our numerous skilling programmes have had little impact on actual employment. We need disruptive change and an altogether different approach to prepare India's workforce for the 21st century. In proposing an approach similar to successful technical schools in Germany and University Technical Colleges (UTCs) in the UK, I have drawn on David Harbourne's recent work on the subject.
We need disruptive change in our skilling programme, but this disruption must be managed within the framework of India's National Education Policy (NEP). The policy has proposed a four-stage system for school education: Foundational stage of 5 years including anganwadi/pre-school (ages 3-6) followed by classes 1 and 2 (ages 6-8); a preparatory stage of 3 years ( ages 8-11) in classes 3 to 5; the middle stage of 3 years (ages 11-14) for classes 6 to 8; and the secondary stage of 4 years (ages 14-18) for classes 9-12. UTCs would be an alternative to secondary stage schools, allowing students the flexibility to subsequently choose between higher education and vocational training.
The STEM- oriented curriculum would include science, mathematics, compulsory language courses in the mother tongue,the national language Hindi, and a global language English, plus optional social science courses. These classroom courses would be combined with technical skilling in some field, including team- based technical projects in collaboration with companies on real world technical problems. Students would also have hours for sports or other extra-curricular activities, but no homework.
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The term 'University Technical College' is important. As vocational training is seen as an inferior alternative to conventional secondary stage school followed by college and a university degree, the term indicates that a UTC also offers a path to higher education and a university degree; in addition, a UTC course equips students with technical skills in some field and real world project experience with a firm in that field, which will enhance their eligibility for apprenticeships and employability.
Access to higher education, if desired, together with better employability gives UTCs an edge over conventional schools. It should gradually wipe out negative perceptions of vocational education. But it also implies a key feature of UTCs: they must be attached to a university and one or more companies as core partners. For example, students of Gothenburg Technical Gymnasium in Germany, located near a Volvo plant, have worked on technical issues tackled by Volvo or other engineering firms. Similarly, the JCB Academy in Rochester, England, has had partnerships with Rolls Royce, Toyota and others, apart from JCB itself.
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UTCs may face initial resistance and challenges. One of these is enrolment. Conventional schools would want to retain their best middle-stage students for their own secondary classes. This is not a problem, provided UTCs can enrol the modal group of students and not just tail-enders. For this, each UTC will need a network of feeder schools through which they can reach out to students and parents to ensure applications.
Another major challenge will be finance. By design, UTCs will be more staff and resource intensive than conventional secondary schools. Governments may have to provide the capital and running costs during the initial years. But after an initial period of three years and possibly another three years after a midterm review and course correction, UTCs should become self-financing.
Best practices and innovative cost-cutting measures can be adopted through comparisons among UTCs. Networking among UTCs providing similar technical skills in a city will enable scale economies, such as sharing the cost of specialist teachers.
Most importantly, other than for means-tested scholarship students, the UTCs must establish student loan schemes in collaboration with banks. UTCs should be rolled out first in cities with many high-tech firms like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Gurugram, and then be gradually extended to other cities.
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Finally, the success of a UTC programme will depend on the awareness of students (and parents) and their 'buy in'. For this, effective communication through multiple levels of government, academic experts and media will have to play a critical role. Such communicators would also be important partners, along with companies, universities and feeder schools, in the country's mission to successfully establish a UTC system.
These are the author's personal views.
The author is chairman, Centre for Development Studies. These are the author's personal views.