Online Degrees Transforming the Indian Higher Education System

This article was originally published in Economic Times. Everyone seems to be talking about disruption. Like “startup” and “funding”, “disruption” has become a part of our daily parlance and evinces a strong sentiment among entrepreneurial enthusiasts. We are seeing disruption across sectors and levels, all of which is helping us in reimagining the world around us. Education, meanwhile, is crying out for disruption but is going unheard. It is a sector that is brimming with opportunities and waiting to be tapped with an innovative approach. The Need of the Hour The question is, are our institutions and universities imparting knowledge for a world that does not exist anymore in its old avatar? And are all of us, especially our youth, becoming smarter learners? The answer for both these questions is a resounding “yes”. The Idea Called UpGrad: Why Education is Serious Business India has the largest college-age population in the world — close to a staggering 125 million — but it is startling to know that less than one in five of them is doing their post-secondary education. This means only 20% of college-age youngsters are doing their higher education as opposed to 90% in the US. Will India be able to achieve its gross domestic product (GDP) growth targets at this rate? No. Will we need to double our participation rates in higher education in the next five-ten years? Yes Can pure offline, brick-and-mortar college and university models fill this massive gap? Again, the answer is obvious. Look at the challenges. One, it takes four-eight years to set up one campus/university and at its peak it could cater to 5,000-10,000 students. Two, we need to have enough trainers and teachers to feed into these facilities, many of them in remote areas or away from cities. Three, the cumulative outlay at scale for private or public-private partnership (PPP) models to cater to the entire college-going population will be nothing short of $100 billion. Four, over half of this 125 million youngsters, I believe, will have compulsions to take up a job very early in life for socio-economic reasons and may not have the flexibility to go back to college after that. In this scenario, online education can be the big disruptor for India. Of course, there will be myriad challenges, but it offers exponential solutions: it can reach the remotest parts of India, aggregate the best faculty as everyone from the offline world can participate with much less demand on their time and lastly our youth can stay in their jobs while continuing to learn. Kushagra Saran’s Journey while Impacting Education Disruption in online education can be the answer to the gigantic challenge that India, called the youngest nation in the world, is facing. If we do not create equal opportunities and access to the best learning/upskilling/upgrading centres for our ambitious and aspiring youth, our demographic dividend can turn into a demographic debt. Skill India too has a goal to train over 400 million people by 2022 and this audacious outreach can be achieved only by radical disruptive thinking and bold execution. However, online will not succeed if it simply copies traditional teaching methodology. Online education should be more focused on professional education and post-graduation as those demographics look for flexibility and augmentation. For early years and K-12, brick-and-mortar schools will continue to play a big role in the holistic development of the child and online education will only be a supplement. Five-Year Plans For online education to be disruptive and for it to succeed, education will have to be thought through as a digitalfirst medium. Technology will have to be integrated to create a superior learning experience on the online platform. Online education has to move away from being a glorified content library; it has to involve peer-to-peer discussions, alumni chats, group studies and more. It has to shed its reputation of providing isolated, individual learning platforms and evolve into a social platform where you are not learning alone but studying together with a lot of individuals. Let’s come to terms with a few things. In the 21st century, what we learn will have less and less relevance after five years and hence there is a need for constant upgrade. Convergence of new forms of learning will be the fuel for and engine of economic growth. Universities need to develop programmes that are linked closely with employer demands. Otherwise, the results will be disastrous: while job seekers overspend on education programmes that are less likely to result in ideal employment opportunities, employers will be hiring poor fits. We need to change the mindsets of multiple stakeholders — academia, companies, students, young professionals and, most important, families — because how we learn and who we learn from have transformed. Our dependence on experts and figures of authority has diminished while our ability to learn from each other has spiralled dramatically. All I can say is, I wish I was back in college today. If you like to have one-to-one with industry experts, networking with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and bag a seed funding to start your idea, check Leadership & Management program

Online education across segments and students population is emerging as a popular option for individuals. Across age groups, online education is getting adopted. A segment where we at UpGrad feel that online adoption will be rapid, is the working professional segment. And there are multiple reasons for the same – from their ability to pay, their willingness to move up in their career etc. In this piece I want to touch upon a key trend that we are targeting – changing requirements of the industry and the need to continuously upgrade for working professionals. To give an example, a few decades ago – a farmer’s son would be a farmer; a carpenter’s son would be a carpenter. Things changed over time, and a farmer’s son started becoming an engineer. And in today’s world, an engineer goes through 5+ career shifts in his/her career span. There’ll Be A Billion-Plus Job-Seekers By 2050, So Get Yourself Skilled NOW! Marketing is not the way it used to be 10 years back. Payment is not the way it used to be 5 years back. Data analysis has undergone drastic changes. And in this digital age, the rate of this change is going to further accelerate. Industry will evolve rapidly, and as working professionals, each one of us has to keep up with this changing requirement. Industry is not going to wait for the individual to get upskilled or upgraded, and a large part of the onus will lie with the individual. Further, the rate at which the needs of the industries are changing; our current university system is not able to cope up. Therefore, individuals have to look for alternate options to add relevant skills to their portfolio. This is where online education comes into the fore. Professionals today do not have the flexibility of leaving their jobs and going to a school to learn new skills. Online education platforms are great options for these professionals who are looking to continuously upgrade, while continuing to stay in their jobs. Unlike offline education, online medium provides the advantage of being able to update the program curriculum and content regularly, and keep it relevant to the industry needs. Online medium also allows real-life problems to come to working professionals learning, where an individual can actually live the real-life situations in the form of case studies. Top 10 Essential Tools For Startup Business in India In the digital age, each individual will have to continuously upskill himself/ herself to stay relevant, and that would provide a large opportunity for edtech startups to create scale platforms. EdTech startups will have to look for opportunities where there is a significant demand supply gap, and look at providing right education programs. The biggest challenge in this will be the ability of edtech startups to design the program content for digital medium, rather than replicate what is being covered in the offline programs. Taking advantage of the digital channel will be key here. So for all edtech startups, keep your ears on the ground, and look for areas and skills that will allow you to build scale learning platform.

The most awaited Google I/O 2016 Conference was filled with announcements about improvements in current products and launch of some new products. In this article, we have summarized the biggest announcements from Day 1 of the conference. Google Allo Allo is Google’s new messaging app with resident chatbot. It has features like whisper/shout, expressive stickers, smart replies- which evolve with time and wide range of bot support especially the Google Assistant search bot. One of the most important features of Allo is that all its chats are encrypted but incognito mode offers end-to-end encryption and an option to send messages that self-destruct. Additionally, once you close a chat, the entire conversation is deleted forever. Google Duo Duo is Google’s mobile only companion app for Allo that helps in video calling. One of its special feature is ‘Knock Knock’ which lets users see the incoming video call feed before even answering the call. So, the receiving party can see who’s calling and where they are before they even pick up the call. Google Assistant Google takes search to the next level. Google Assistant supports “conversational understanding” to make search more natural and to better support voice searches. Google Home Home is built on the Chromecast standard, which lets it push media to other Cast-compatible speakers and screens, change temperature or lighting through Nest devices, and integrate with third party services. The entire experience is hands-free, powered entirely by voice. In fact, it doesn’t even have any buttons. Simple voice commands will control every aspect of the Home. Android N Android N comes with new features that include more control over notification size from different apps and a new picture-in-picture mode. Android N uses a new API called Vulkan that lets developers directly control a phone’s GPU for sharper 3D graphics. Android N will also download and install system updates automatically. The name of Android N has not yet been released. It is going to be selected through a crowdsourced contest. Google Daydream Google has a new VR platform built on top of Android N, and the new VR platform is called Google Daydream. It is an optimized virtual reality platform that aims to standardize the mobile-based VR experience. It also spans both software and hardware; Its biggest limitation is that it will be available only in new phones with special sensors and screen. Android Wear 2.0 Android Wear 2.0 can function independently of a smartphone. Apps no longer need a connected smartphone in order to function. Apps can function and even communicate without a phone, as long as the wearable device is connected to the internet via cellular or Wi-Fi. Users can also make data from any app show up on any watch face. Instant Apps One of the most interesting announcement was google Instant Apps. With Instant Apps, users can begin using an app instantly from right within the Google Play store without even having to download and install the app. As we can see, Google has made some big moves in the three hottest areas of tech – virtual reality, messaging, and smart assistants. However it would be interesting to see how these new products will compete with their competitors and how much of market share would they capture after their launch.

This isn’t just a catchy headline meant to shock you, though that would be a justified reaction. If you are 25 years old, have graduated from a reputed institute in a traditional higher education discipline and are looking for a job, you may not be handed one on a platter any time soon. You may be cushioned within the famous Indian demographic that is supposed to yield a “dividend”, but unlike what you’ve been reading everywhere, this does not guarantee you employment. Between 1980 to 2010, 90% of world labour force growth occurred in developing countries and about 500 million new workers emerged in India and China alone (workers went from 260 million to 470 million in India, between this period). India, along with other developing counterparts, is all set to fuel 60% of the global growth in labour in the upcoming years. Keep in mind that enrolment in Indian higher education is only 24% right now. With India attaining almost universal elementary education and increased retention in secondary schools, the projected demand for higher education and jobs thereafter, will only escalate. By 2050, India will be home to more than a billion job seekers. This means providing jobs for over 12 million new entrants annually. There is also the challenge of finding jobs for the backlog, which reached 60 million by 2014. So isn’t this good news? India finally placed on the world map with a solid advantage where labour supply is concerned. Well, it may not all be good news. The new-age job-seeker must strive to acquire specific skill sets to be considered employable. Currently, only 43% of Indian youth are considered fully employable. Indian millennials are being touted as the future of jobs and the saviours of the working world. But this won’t hold true if in-demand skills are not imparted to the youth entering the workforce. The world of work is changing and industries are transforming. It’s a fact that we are moving towards a massive labour pool, but we are possibly riding a low-skill, low-wage cycle to get there. The country is on a trajectory that involves a surplus of millions of low-skill workers, whereas most nations, including India, will be increasingly demanding a high-skill workforce. Impacting Education: My Journey and UpGrad Most industries are replacing low-skill jobs with high-skill ones. Skills relating to upcoming technologies like cloud computing, social media, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, etc, are gaining immense relevance. Unfortunately, our education system is not preparing students well enough to enter the workforce as high-skill workers or equipping them with skills in the mentioned emerging domains. Gone are the days when just holding a graduate degree was enough to get employers to clamour to hire you. Education is not enough. The new-age job-seeker must strive to acquire specific skill sets to be considered employable. Currently, only 43% of Indian youth are considered fully employable. Gone are the days when just holding a graduate degree was enough to get employers to clamour to hire you. Education is not enough. The positive connotation associated with our demographic shift has been taken for granted and assigned the term “dividend.” But if we don’t strategically harness this change, we could very easily be faced with a demographic disaster. We don’t want to be stuck in a situation where we have too many job-seekers with inadequate skills, and therefore not enough jobs for them. India is moving workers out of farm jobs at a very fast rate, and this will only add to the burden of providing jobs in other sectors. We need a wake-up call and more concerted efforts towards large-scale skill development and training. We may have a situation of too few high-skill workers and not enough jobs for medium- or low-skill workers. This needs to be rectified by adjusting the education and skilling system to ready ourselves for the jobs of tomorrow. UpGrad develops various programs such as Digital Marketing Certification Program, and Product Management Certification Program in collaboration with IIIT Bangalore, specially designed for working professionals looking to up-skill themselves.  Check out the free courses.

Co-authored by: Apoorva Shankar, Business Development Associate, UpGrad The world today has enhanced productivity requirements. Due to this, the demand for highly skilled labour is growing. China and India are set to drive this demand. Globally, the share of low-skill jobs is likely to decline from 74% of employment in 2010 to 62% by 2020. On the other hand, the shortage of highly skilled workers with a tertiary level of education is expected to reach 18 million by 2020, globally. But due to its demographic dividend, India will have a labour surplus of 47 million by 2020. However, this surplus may only be of low-skilled labour. And while the demand for highly skilled labour is increasing, the supply isn’t quite keeping up. The challenge, as well as opportunity, that India faces is how to train such a large reserve of labour and convert low skills to high skills. One solution that immediately comes to mind is providing higher education for all. But at present only 24% of those meant to be participating in higher education, are actually enrolled. Plus, traditional college or university pedagogy has been increasingly criticized for being outdated and irrelevant to the jobs market. If you attended school or college in India, you will have first-hand experience of the ills that plague the system. Some of the reasons for this are: Absence of a customized or personalized approach to education (necessary as different students have different needs and learning capabilities). Restricted resources due to not-for-profit nature of educational institutes and over-regulation. Lack of technology infrastructure. Poor teaching quality. Lack of skills-based learning. Low focus on research and development. Minimal partnerships with industry/foreign academia. Outdated curricula not reflecting requirements of a dynamic market environment. Skill-intensive industries are expected to contribute more than 90% of India’s GDP by 2030. The opportunity is staring at us in the face. Only about 25% of Indian graduates are considered employable by the organized sector. Further, 48% of Indian employers said they were having difficulty in filling jobs, in 2012. Despite employers expressing difficulty in finding employable candidates, in 2009-10 the unemployment rates in India were higher for those who were more educated (graduates had more difficulty finding jobs than secondary or primary level graduates). [b_color background=”#EDFF3D”] Also Read – Technology will surely kill some jobs, but not all of them [/b_color] So Indian education, in its current form, hasn’t proved to be enough training for the incoming workforce. The numbers also prove that just completing higher education in any field is not all it takes anymore. This pinch is being increasingly felt as the world of jobs is turning upside down; which is why we need skill training. Skill-intensive industries are expected to contribute more than 90% of India’s GDP by 2030. The opportunity is staring at us in the face. It’s not just about the potential but also the responsibility we are tasked with — restoring balance to the global supply of labour. The country needs to invest in skill development and training for a large chunk of its population. Exploiting sheer numbers is therefore one major reason to skill our workers. Secondly, the demand for advanced skill-sets in emerging areas is growing. Knowledge-intensive roles such as finance, business, etc, and those related to information technology and entrepreneurship are gaining momentum. The reality that these skills must be acquired will take root for more and more individuals, including drop-outs from the mainstream education system and those who have completed such education. Currently, the actual supply of these workers falls drastically short of matching growing demand. Hence, the gaps in domain knowledge are another reason to scale up the skilling. You are likely to be at a disadvantage, in terms of skill training and thereby employability, when compared to someone your age in China, USA, South Korea… In China about 47% of the workforce has received some kind of skill training, 52% in USA, 68% in UK, 75% in Germany, 80% in Japan and 96% in South Korea. Comparatively, only about 10% of the Indian workforce received such training in 2008. India is seventh in the category of countries facing maximum difficulty in filling jobs, i.e., 58% difficulty, where the global average is 38%. These figures reflect that just belonging to the young Indian demographic is not enough. You are likely to be at a disadvantage, in terms of skill training and thereby employability, when compared to someone your age in China, USA, South Korea etc. To address these imbalances, India needs unprecedented increase in both education and job creation. At this point, there is no guaranteed advantage for India in the contest for high-skill talent. It will be dependent on skilling. Considering the state of higher education and the skill upgrade required to be carried out in the future, the process will not just be about learning for professionals, but rather unlearning and re-learning.

There is really no secret sauce for success. Provided you have had the opportunity to view the exclusive online tete-e-tete sessions brought to you by UpGrad Talks. With an amazing roster of world-class speakers, some from the top 1000 companies of India such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Sky, Coca Cola, JP Morgan, JWT to start-up poster children such as RedBus, Snadeal, Ola & Zivame and many more, Upgrad Talks provides insights into their formulae for success. The talks also share deep learning from situations that didn’t work out and many valuable nuggets of honest, down-to-earth and practical advice from successful entrepreneurs, experts and industry leaders. While some lip service has been paid to new-age technologies and skill sets, and the evolution of industries because of these, a deeper understanding of what this signifies is missing. Upgrad Talks intends to fill this gap by bringing together thought-leaders from different walks of life and raising the level of discourse in this area, as they share their experiences. Here are the top reasons why you must visit talks.upgrad.com today and make it your daily source of insights and motivation: Get Inspired Inspiration can come from many different sources. You may get inspired when you see a problem that needs a solution, which you are able to ideate, or get inspired when you hear stories of adversity being overcome by sheer willpower. Rarely does the simple existence of wealth inspire us. It may motivate us to work harder, but inspiration stems from a deeper place that needs real stories. Upgrad Talks are stories from the folks who have lived these stories, first hand. Not only does hearing someone’s complete story of challenges, thought process and subsequent outcome inspire, it also gives birth to new ideas and provides impetus to grow in your own space.  Moreover, inspiration also stems from well-put statements such as, ‘attitude will sail you through,’ by Harit Nagpal, CEO of Tata Sky. A key benefit of listening to industry leaders is that it also inspires us to think. ‘What we think, we become,’ is a quote by Buddha that sums up this well. Go ahead, face challenges It does not matter if you are a startup or an established financial organization; challenges, big or small, exist in every level of most businesses. Challenges faced, strategized and overcome is the rite of passage for almost everyone. Not only do Upgrad Talks cover challenges faced by leading industry veterans, it also covers it from various stages of businesses along with discussion of the solutions that helped overcome them. Upgrad Talks speakers’ discuss challenges faced by businesses in different spaces, which makes these talks an interesting listen. Furthermore, is quite motivating to hear the candid conversations of business leaders. So what is the common thought on challenges in the Upgrad Talks? No challenge is too big. It also strengthens the belief that challenges help you grow and become stronger and develops a sense of confidence to take on the next big challenge. Learn from influencers People who can motivate are great influencers. To hear success stories at Upgrad Talks, which have been driven by deep-rooted passion as well as courage of conviction can be a great influence on most people. It is likely to help you push yourself to greater heights and also follow your dreams a bit more diligently. To quote Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl, ‘ there is a fine line between stubbornness and persistence.’ Upgrad Talks is likely to help you define the lines as an excellent selection of influencers talk also about the key soft skills required to make it a significant mark on the industry that you belong to. Mentoring As you listen to entrepreneurs, business leaders and experts on models that have worked, one can also start drawing parallels to one’s one business or profession. Mentoring of this kind is both subtle and effective as it helps you choose some key takeaways from the shared experiences that are most relevant to you. Follow the series to get premium access to the best mentors in the country as they talk about education, the emerging digital age and its impact on businesses, talent shortages and advice to youngsters. A bit of crystal gazing In the series of Upgrad Talks, one is likely to come across a vast amount of business knowledge which has been converted into digestible insights that can also help you choose the next steps in your career. Speakers’ at Upgrad Talks share their business mantras and what the future is likely to be.  This is crystal gazing of the finest variety and yet another reason to tune into the talks. A healthy dash of optimism One of the unique selling points of the Upgrad Talks is that they also brings out the combined optimism in business from key industry leaders. Apart from that one can learn what is next in the industry, and explore potential future opportunities in the workspace. The upbeat and positive nature of these talks makes them a must-listen. Easily available online Just in case you were wondering how far you would need to travel to listen to such a wide range of speakers, you can breath easy. Upgrad Talks are delivered online and you can listen to them at your own convenience. All you need to do is to long onto talks.upgrad.com and you can access high quality, pre-recorded sessions online. Upgrad is making content richer, bigger and better as it kicks off with 15+ talks delivered by entrepreneurs, experts & business leaders.  You definitely do not want to miss out on the educational transformation that UpGrad is fuelling in partnership with some of the greatest minds. Remember, one can never stop learning. So, if you always aspired to hear great advice and insights from the top Indian business leaders on how you can grow your business, choose a career goal or get inspired, do take a look at Upgrad Talks. They are truly the voices that impact. Join us today and be a part of it at talks.upgrad.com.