Our thinking about the merits of education are intrinsically tied to its correlation with employment. Most tertiary graduates now accept that they will enter employment with some level of debt, but believe the opportunity cost to be worthwhile when set against their earning potential. Even the government wants 50% of students to go to HE. But what would happen if the link between education and employment became negative?

This is already the case in India, a country with 11m HE students, which produces more tertiary graduates annually than any other country. Unemployment amongst tertiary graduates is almost 17%, higher than it is for those with only a high school education or below.

So what is wrong with Indian HE? Critics point to a bifurcated system with a small number of elite institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, and a large number of diploma factories that focus on traditional rote learning and strict obedience, rather than promoting values such as independent thinking, clear communication, group work, debating ideas and most importantly intellectual rigour.

Interestingly it may be the centralised nature of Indian education that has led to the mismatch between what employers want and what the HE sector produces.

Weak English skills is a key problem. The growth in learning English internationally has seen standards rise, but not in the Indian HE sector. Indian students need to be bilingual in Hindi, a local dialect (like Telugu, Bengali, Sindhi, etc) and English, otherwise their employment prospects are very limited, no matter what course they studied and how well they performed in exams.

Hinglish, an amalgam of Hindi and English, is the lingua franca at many institutions (it is used in schools, colleges and universities and is estimated to be used by 350m people). But, like its Singaporean equivalent Singlish, Hinglish is not a linguistic skill wanted by local or international employers. Oddly, if you masked these facts and focused on an HE system with a few elite institutions, a growing number of graduates with less than useful degrees, whose international employability is hindered in their monolingualism, then you might just be describing the UK. Our graduates are by and large far more employable but it’s festive food for thought!