Formal degrees no more on students’ wish list

The education sector is making rapid progress in India, compared to other sectors. Owing to the global economic slowdown that severely impacted India during 2011-12, companies and establishments resorted to a massive downsizing.

The much-hyped IT and ITES sector bore the brunt of this slowdown and a lot of educated professionals lost their jobs. The aftermath of the downturn resulted in a massive fall in demand for technical education.  People started looking for alternative routes and the era of industry-centric courses was ushered in.

About a decade ago, professional courses like engineering, medicine and law were most the sought-after course. Obtaining degrees in these domains were considered to be a privilege and an honour. However, these courses started becoming too expensive for the middle-class and the masses started looking for alternative courses that would fetch them good jobs.

With the advent globalization and technology, new avenues have opened up in the employment market. Informal education and creative programs are more sought after today as they make students better equipped to enter the job market and offer better career prospects.

According to a recent study the fall in demand for formal education courses like law, medicine and engineering has given way to vocational courses like fashion designing, animation, journalism and interior designing in the last five years.

Here’s a glimpse courses students’ opted for as on April 2016

Graduation and Post-graduation                                    18%

Medicine, Engineering                                                    19%

Vocational course                                                            40%

Others                                                                              20%

Self-employment aspirants                                               3%

Courses like fashion designing, information technology, animation, media, e-marketing, mass communication and journalism, interior designing and medical transcription constitutes around 40% of the demand amongst student.