HYDERABAD: Telangana as well as its capital city Hyderabad need to undergo a reality check regarding the quality of skills being imparted, and employability of its youth. In the recently-released India Skills Report (ISR)-2018, Hyderabad and Telangana do not figure in the list of ‘Cities with highest employability’ and ‘Top-10 states with highest employability’ respectively.
This is based on the performance in an employability skills test taken by 5,10,000 students from 5,200 institutions across all the states and Union Territories belonging to various academic backgrounds, for the fifth edition of ISR —a joint initiative of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), PeopleStrong, Wheebox, United Nations Development Project (UNDP), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Pearson, and Association of Indian Universities (AIU).
While the Telangana government has been regularly talking about its achievement in Ease of Doing Business rankings, initiative of promoting entrepreneurship through T-Hub or touting Hyderabad as an IT and pharmaceutical hub, it seems to have lost focus on the quality of higher education and skills being imparted to students. Telangana scored low in the ‘hiring activity’ data as presented by the ISR-2018. It shows that only 2.24 per cent hiring took place in Telangana, much lower than other southern states including Tamil Nadu (10.58%), Karnataka (10.51%), Andhra Pradesh (3.31%), and just ahead of Kerala (1.74%). The top three slots in ‘hiring activity are occupied by Maharashtra (16.51%), New Delhi(13.58%) and Tamil Nadu.
When asked about the reasons as to why Telangana and Hyderabad could not make it to the list of top states and cities, an official of PeopleStrong said, “When we asked specific questions from more than 110+ employers regarding which top 10 cities they are planning to hire from, we did not get much response for Telangana. We do not ask questions on why not a particular state. Also, in the employability assessment of students from more than 5,200 institutes, it totally depended on the number and quality of responses we got from students across these institutions. It also depends on the sharpness of students.”
AP maintains its rank in highest employable population list
It may be mentioned that in the 2017 edition of ISR, Telangana figured at eighth place among the top-10 states with highest employable population and ranked seventh among top-10 preferred states for hiring. Compared to this, Andhra Pradesh has managed to maintain its spot among the top-10 states, from last year, in this year’s report as well. Hyderabad did not figure in the top-10 cities with female employability too. Vijayawada, though, found a spot in this list.
‘Telangana has one of the highest unemployment rates in country’
The unemployment rate among the graduates in TS was 21.23% in 2017. Here are the details....
Latest ‘Unemployment in India’ report by Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy and BSE, shows the unemployment rate in TS for the period September-December 2017 among graduates is 21.23 per cent
In periods
January-April 2017 and May-August 2017, the rate of unemployment was 18.67 per cent and 18.59 per cent respectively in Telangana
Looking at CMIE-BSE report one can understand that in Telangana there is a stark contrast between unemployment rate among graduates and the lesser-educated, which means that graduates in the state are not getting enough job opportunities
Interestingly, while TS ranks among States with highest unemployment rates among graduates in India, the overall unemployment rate in the state is one of the lowest at 3.5 per cent, which is lower than 21 other states
For example, while unemployment rate in Telangana among Class VI-IX passouts is 0.9 per cent, among Class X-XII passouts, it is 3.1 per cent and a whopping 21.23 per cent among graduates