"India's Promise," -Education Obstacles
Thursday, May 24, 2007SUSIE GHARIB: Indian businessmen tout their country's vast pool of young workers as one of its greatest assets and a key reason India will become an economic superpower. But the country faces a major challenge: educating those people so that they are employable. As we continue our series "India's Promise," Darren Gersh explains why a country of more than a billion people is facing a talent shortage.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: This is what a one-room school house looks like in India, two blackboards, three teachers, four walls, no roof. Latif Bux teaches 89 students here. What do you do when it rains?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is holiday.
GERSH: Holiday?
GERSH: Here in Agra, not far from the Taj Mahal, poor planning has left the government without enough room to build schools. This space is rented for $2 a month and these students are lucky. At other schools, the children meet under a tree. School attendance is still a new habit here in India. The government has had some success improving attendance by offering a free mid-day meal. The question is whether the students are learning enough once they get here. Madhav Chavan says the answer is no. Chavan runs Pratham, a non-profit group teaching children across India.
MADHAV CHAVAN, DIRECTOR, PRATHAM: Everybody was talking numbers of children who go to school (INAUDIBLE) access and nobody was talking about learning outcomes. Now that India has turned that corner and said OK, look, we've got 93 kids percent enrolled in school, everybody is saying let's have quality. It also happens to coincide well with the economic growth and the challenges that that is throwing at us.
GERSH: The poor quality of most Indian schools means the country is in danger of losing its greatest resource. Almost one in three children drop out before finishing eight years of school. In Agra, thousands of boys like these leave school every year to work in the local shoe industry. Of those who do make it to fifth grade, half cannot solve a simple division problem.
CHAVAN: Many skills are just not taught, for example English. We don't have enough English teachers and we don't know what to do with it.
GERSH: Failing schools are a costly problem for Indian businesses. Software giant Infosys screens almost a million-and-a-half resumes a year to find 25,000 new hires. Infosys human resources director TV Mohandas Pai figures just one in 10 18 to 24 year olds are actually employable.
T V MOHANDAS PAI, DIRECTOR HUMAN RESOURCES, INFOSYS: What does it mean? It means that people go through an educational experience and then people like us have to spend enormous amount of time and money training them up to what we need. All over the country, it's the same challenge.
GERSH: You can see that challenge here. These students have just taken the entrance exam for one of India's prestigious institutes of technology. But just one in 50 will get in. The rest must choose among colleges of widely varying quality. The spotty record of the Indian educational system is one reason businesses complain about a skills shortage. It's estimated only a quarter of the 400,000 engineers India produces every year receives an adequate education. That why salaries for skilled workers are rising 12 to 15 percent a year. In a country of a billion people, Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesen says that's hard to explain.
RAVI VENKATESAN, CHAIRMAN, MICROSOFT INDIA: Why did I call it a paradox? Because on this one hand you've got this huge pool of people who are all desperate to enter the workforce and gain employment. On the other hand, industry is really starving to find the right kinds of talent. We got this massive amount of pressure building up.
GERSH: It's not just software engineers. There is a shortage of trained plumbers and electricians. Small technology players and traditional manufacturers are hit hardest because they can't compete with high-tech giants like Infosys, IBM and Microsoft. To ease the skills squeeze, Microsoft is launching Internet-based training programs where potential workers could earn certificates proving their employability.
VENKATESAN: So do we have a huge crisis? Absolutely so. And things are likely to get more severe before they get better. But the promise is there that in about five years, we would have dramatically expanded both the capacity of the educational system and addressed some of the quality issues.
GERSH: Indian parents, including many of the poor, are not waiting. They're sending their kids to private schools, which now enroll one out of every six students here. Government leaders like Montek Singh Ahluwalia say those who want a higher standard of education should be able to buy one.
MONTEK SINGH AHLUWALIA, DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, PLANNING COMMISSION: My view is that we need to do a lot to improve the public school system, but we need to allow the private school system to expand also. And therefore, I would leave it to market forces to determine the mix.
GERSH: But for now, Indian schools, private and public, are failing the future and leaving India short of the skilled workers it needs to fully realize its economic promise. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Agra.
GHARIB: Tomorrow, as technology improves, will more jobs be off-shored to India? We'll address that issue as we continue our series "India's Promise."
