Looking at undergraduate education in India and the opportunities around it

Current Situation

If you look at the undergraduate education syllabus for 'Commerce' in India, the first observation is that it has negligible practical relevance. The subjects revolve around accounting and management theory which is taught by faculties who are employed by the colleges full-time, which means that they have no experience of dealing with real business situations. The students are evaluated based on written and memory based exams. Students socialise largely over college festivals and less over case studies or projects. Most students (and their parents) know this but I believe they still do it to have the 'graduation degree'.

A good chunk attempts the Chartered Accountancy exam or decides to pursue CAT-GMAT-India MBA-Foreign MBA (because only this graduate degree will not make you employable). But then 'what is the point of spending 3 years for this Bachelor of Commerce' is a question nobody is answering.

Changed scenarios today

I spent my entire last year working with start-ups, angel investors and venture capital investors. The expectations from graduate freshers when they apply for an internship or a full time position are different today - mainly revolving around digital marketing or B2B sales (called business development) - which is not discussed at all during graduation as a soft skill or as a hard skill. Most small businesses outsource accounting and build an internal finance team over time. As a graduate, data entry and book-keeping is the only relatable job which may be available. The most natural expectation from a graduate fresher is to be very fluent and comfortable with verbal and written communication - which also sometimes is not met.

What are the reasons for this?

First, it is important to note that whatever is being taught today does have a valid reason - which is to impart basic knowledge of accounting and management. There are also subjects taught on taxation, corporate laws, financial statements and other important topics but the teaching methods are superficial and experiential learning is totally absent. There are no visiting faculties and there are no case studies. And the main reason behind this is that colleges are generally governed by a university and it is the Universities Grant Commission which decides how the course is run, how teachers are appointed and how students are evaluated. Even if a college is an autonomous university, it is bound my a certain way of developing and running a course. There is leniency to improve the curriculum, introduce new subjects and hire visiting faculties but the evaluation and examination methods remain the same. This may also be the reason why you see more startups focusing on postgraduate education directly. The startups are either a portal to land you into your dream college outside India or run their own postgraduate course. Think of Leverage Edu or Mesa School of Business.

What are the opportunities here?

The first opportunities emerged around skill based learning - coding courses, finance basics courses, vocational courses, etc. But then thanks to democratisation of education in the internet age, students eventually find what they are interested in, find a course for it and do it online. They might have found it on YouTube or Coursera or Udemy or through some other media. The same kind of quality and courses may not be there in their undergraduate curriculum and if they are - they may lack practical insights or experiential learning. The challenge with these courses is that they miss providing the validation of having a 'degree'.

The next opportunities obviously were around launching private undergraduate programs for students who want nothing but quality education from expert faculties with real-life experiences. Think of Masters Union here which has its own 3 year undergraduate program. This space is still developing and can certainly be developed further provided there are more entrepreneurs willing to take a bet on education and more industry experts willing to take out their time from work to contribute to the education scenario in India.

The next opportunities may lie around offering elective and flexible education while maintaining the social and campus life. Think about it - online courses and AI promote elective learning - pick up a topic and learn only that. Traditional education standardised everything and it was acceptable till a large majority wanted to do a job or pursue postgraduate education and then do a job. But over time 18 year olds (who have / will grow up watching shark tank) might want to start by learning core skills needed to get employed by a company and get hands-on experience as early as possible. Early work experience helps significantly in discovering what your interests, strengths and weaknesses are.

Obviously, basic skills are not and will never be enough and there should be an option to resume education with work experience and mature insights about own strengths, interests and weaknesses.

Institutes that can offer elective education like choosing to learn basics of coding, then switch to learning how to build a brand, know how to read and make sense of financial statements (while already doing a side course on digital marketing) and where CXOs teach and fund start-ups might be the most suited.

Another insight is that students with a traditional family business (coupled with comfortable lifestyle and lack of interest in education) may tend to look at education only as a formality. The opportunity here is that institutes must launch a specially designed curriculum to teach the next generation how to scale family businesses while dealing with the emotional family aspects of the business (generally around family disputes and fighting new start-ups).

Moreover, this is the need of the hour because India needs more employable people than graduate people and more entrepreneurs than job seekers.

............and the conclusion is?

We need educational organisations that start with teaching soft skills and end with offering options to electively learn hard skills, depending on varying goals. This not only makes them employable at a young age but also entrepreneurial. The need to pursue MBA or postgraduate may diminish and the brain-drain may also slow down. In effect, we need "institutes of entrepreneurship" where skills are taught by visiting faculties (people with real-life experiences) to empower a young mind.

Because an entrepreneurial mindset consistently opens doors to employment opportunities, whereas the reverse is not necessarily true.