Available Skill Pool Mismatches Required Skill on the Job Front

The other day, I was reading ‘The Hindu’ and a specific headline caught my eye. It talks about a survey carried out by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) on various corporate firms. It seems that there is 65% job vacancy in these firms. The reason seems to be lack of skill in job seekers. That’s interesting.

There is so much impetus on getting a job these days that people are willing to get any damn certification, diploma and what not. And still we see a gap in the available skill pool and required skill set. What could be the reasons behind this gap?

I am sure a lot of people know the answer.

This raised a series of fundamental questions - Is the job market opening up opportunities for unknown skills? A special kind that’s not available in today’s education system for potential job seekers to acquire, I guess.

Not really. Right? But this seems to be true from an education system standpoint.

Is the system still encouraging natural growth of curiosity and knowledge that nurture open mindedness? It is actually the opposite. It has narrowed down a lot.

The output of a genuine education system is supposedly knowledgeable and intelligent citizens with social awareness, moral values, broad mindedness and empathy towards society in general. They have a presence of mind that lets them react unobtrusively to any given situation. Their common sense will be at an optimal level where they know when and how to do what. And this is the most basic and important skill found in properly EDUCATED person and this is the skill required in an efficient employee.

But today, we find a fallacy in education system, where only the numbers in the so called progress card matter more than the actual grasp on the subjects. The system is more like a humongous machine creating clones trained to repeat so many sentences and formulae in a stipulated period of time.

Under this system, there is an exponential growth in educational institutes that share the common goal of creating more clones. They function more like clone’ries than schools/colleges.

... to be contd.