Expanding apprenticeship can redefine employability of students

Covid pandemic has again highlighted issues with higher education in India:

Covid-19 has again highlighted issues with the education system.
India has 3.74 crore students enrolled in over 51,000 higher education institutions.
GER in higher education has remained stagnant:

The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) has been stagnant at 26% (23% for SC and 17% for ST) for the last three years.

Of them, 46% of students are attending government colleges, 24% are attending government-aided colleges, and 26% are attending private colleges.

China’s GER is now double that of India.
Until the 1990s, India’s university system was recognised as more robust than China’s.
But, as recently as 2004, the World Top 500 University Ranking (QS) had one university from India and five from China (they now have 24 and we have 9).

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 targets 50%-GER by 2035.
For this to happen, there needs to be a leap in the skill-competencies of students because unemployment and unemployability of graduates are higher than that of other youth.
Apprenticeships can help achieve this:

Linking higher education degrees to the learning-by-doing and learning-while-earning of apprenticeships will make higher education more inclusive and demand-driven.

Apprenticeship:

An apprenticeship is a program that trains a worker to become skilled in a particular trade, and achieves a recognised qualification.
Apprenticeships combine hands-on work with classroom learning to train the apprentice. Apprenticeships tend to be full-time, hands-on experiences where working and learning are equally important.
Most of their training is done while working for an employer who helps the apprentices learn their trade or profession.
Apprenticeship is regulated by the Apprentice Act.
Different from internships:

Internships are different.
They are usually for college students for a small period of time, and don’t have any classroom instruction or qualification attached to it.
They are often generalized to give some exposure to industry, rather than specified for a particular trade. Internships are not regulated by any law.

India's apprenticeship numbers are very very low due to regulatory issues:

However, India has poor traditional employer engagement with apprenticeships.
India has only 5 lakh apprenticeships, with only 30,000 employers creating them.
In comparison, the UK has 2 lakh employers creating 20 lakh apprenticeships.

Industry in India is interested in creating more apprenticeships:

Indian industry faces many people-supply-chain challenges; 50% are challenged in finding talent, 54% are concerned about productivity, 45% are worried about the soaring hiring costs, and 40% fear losing talent to the competition.
Many are considering apprenticeships because they realise these programs have better paybacks than direct hiring.

50% of freshers directly hired at Rs 20,000 per month leave within a year and those that stay take one year to reach productivity benchmarks.
But, only 25% of candidates from structured apprenticeships left within a year, and they reached productivity benchmarks in six months.

Consequently, an investment of Rs 2.4 lakh in an apprenticeship programme gives a return of Rs 5-5.5 lakh.

Students and Industry are ready for apprenticeship to take off:

Enough students and employers now recognise the value of apprentices.
Indian employers and universities are ready to grow apprenticeship manifold in the country.
It is possible to have 10 million apprenticeships in India at a time over the next 10 years, with proper regulatory easing.

This needs regulatory change:

The government has made comprehensive changes in apprenticeship laws to bring industry to the centre of the programme, with the government bodies only being facilitators.
But, over the last five years, fragmented decision-making undermined this. Gradually, governmental controls have crept back into the ecosystem through different schemes and guidelines.
Enabling growth in apprenticeship will need regulatory change, flexibility, and boldness.

What needs to be done for apprenticeships to take off in India

For the fundamental shift in apprenticeships to happen, the four regulators (ministry of skill development, the Central Apprenticeship Council, ministry of education, and UGC) need to rise above their individual turfs.
Four changes in rules, regulations and guidelines by the four regulators can be put into effect in less than six months to get things back on track.
Spelling out the role of the university:

Apprentices Rules have already introduced the definition of degree-apprenticeship in 2019 by the ministry of skill development & entrepreneurship (MSDE).
The rules also need to include ‘university’ in the definition as the entity that will execute this programme and spell out the role it will play in such execution.
The university could be made the third party in the apprenticeship contract other than the ‘employer’ and ‘apprentice’, to protect the interest of the students engaged as apprentices.
This is possible under Section 8(2) of the Apprentices Act.

The role of the university and the processes it needs to follow while running apprenticeship-embedded degree courses should flow out of the guidelines issued by the UGC from time to time under section 22(3) of the UGC Act.
However, the brief guidelines circulated by the UGC at present don’t even mention the MSDE, even though the MSDE is responsible for implementing apprenticeship in India.
The guidelines need to be redrafted after proper consultation with MSDE, the industry associations, higher education institutions, sectoral skill councils and other stakeholders.

The UGC Regulations issued under section 26(1), read with section 2(f) of the UGC Act, need to be amended to create space for skills universities.

A parallel set of guidelines that will be applicable to such skill universities need to be framed, which may necessitate changes in the UGC Regulations for Teachers 2018, UGC online regulations 2018, and the IQAC guidelines.
Similarly, the UGC Rules regarding fitness of universities will need to be amended to introduce a new category of skill universities, as has been done in case of agricultural universities, technical universities and open universities.

Conclusion:

India has long known the importance of vocational education.
Mahatma Gandhi used an education conference at Wardha in 1937 to synthesise a framework for massifying experiential learning—Nai Talim—that aimed to overcome the harmful distinctions between learning and teaching, knowledge and work, and teacher and student.
Unfortunately, Nai Talim never took off.
The NEP 2020 creates a policy window for radical changes to apprenticeship with its focus on flexibility, creativity and employability.
It is high time Gandhi's vision of Nai Talim is rolled out now.

Ayush Prakash