India churns out million-plus graduates every year. Degrees are being handed out, the convocation photographs clicked, and the expectations are sky-high. But a new report highlights an unnerving disconnect between what colleges teach and what companies actually need. As many as three out of four higher education institutions in India remain industry-unready, says a recent report by TeamLease Edtech.
This is not like any other education report. It's a reality check for students, parents, policymakers, and recruiters.
The report, titled From Degree Factories to Employability Hubs, is based on 1,071 responses from institutions across India, including public, private and deemed universities. Despite employability being a stated goal across campuses, outcomes remain weak.
Only 16.67% of institutions reported placement rates between 76-100% within six months of graduation. In other words, less than one in five colleges can confidently say that most of their students get placed quickly upon completion of their degrees.
But one of the biggest problems lies in the area of curriculum alignment. Only 8.6% of the responding institutions reported that their programmes are fully aligned with industry needs. Another 16.9% said this alignment existed only in selected courses.
The more worrying figure, however, is this: More than 51% of institutions candidly admitted that their curriculum has no alignment with industry requirements whatsoever. Add another 19% where alignment is still “in progress,” and it becomes clear that most students are studying content that employers don’t actively value.
As the founder of TeamLease Edtech, Shantanu Rooj explains, this is not an execution problem but a system design problem.
Industry involvement within the classrooms is negligible. Only 23% of institutions involve industry professionals in teaching. Professors of Practice, with experience from an industrial background, are integrated across multiple programmes in only 7.56% of colleges.
Similarly, more than 60% of institutions have not yet integrated industry-recognized certifications into their curricula. These often mean more to employers than a set of theoretical coursework, yet they remain an afterthought.
However, experiential learning-one of the most key drivers of job readiness-remains far from mainstream. Only 9.4% of institutions have internships embedded across all programmes. Even when counted partially, only 26.8% offer meaningful internship integration.
Live projects in industries further paint the picture bleaker. Fewer than 10% of institutions use them actively, leaving minimal real-world problem-solving exposure for students before graduation.
The message from this report is pretty clear. If employability is indeed the objective, then industry partnerships, curriculum co-creation, compulsory internships, and applied learning cannot remain optional add-ons. These have to be the building blocks of how colleges operate and are assessed.
Until that cultural shift takes place, India will go on churning out graduates with degrees in hand-but jobs still out of reach.
