Indien setzt bei Ausbildung stärker auf Berufspraxis statt auf Abschlüsse

India's vocational education moves from degrees to skills

India is in the middle of consequential shifts in its education story, mainstreaming vocational learning into a system dominated by rote, degree-first thinking. The scale of the challenge is real, as graduate unemployment estimates range from 51% to 57%, and youth joblessness stood at 15.2 % in March 2026, up from 13.8% in 2025, even as overall unemployment eased to 5.5% by May 2026.

The State of Working India 2026 report adds a sharper edge to this picture: two-thirds of unemployed Indians aged 20-29 were graduates in 2023, up from less than half in 2017, and of those graduates who do find work, only 6.7% land permanent salaried positions. But what deserves equal attention is how much groundwork has already been laid to correct course, and how much more is now within reach.

Encouraging Signs of Change

The numbers tell a genuinely hopeful story of momentum. The share of India's working-age population with some vocational or technical training rose sharply from 8.1% in 2017-18 to 34.7% in 2023-24, a more than fourfold increase in just six years.

This is not incremental progress; it reflects the compounding effect of sustained investment in skilling infrastructure since the launch of the National Education Policy 2020, which set an ambitious target of exposing 50% of learners to vocational education by 2025. Reviews of implementation confirm meaningful gains in foundational learning and vocationalisation efforts across states, even as the full target remains a work in progress.

Apprenticeship, once a marginal feature of Indian education, is now showing real, if uneven, scale. Over 43 lakh apprentices have been engaged cumulatively under the PM-NAPS scheme, spanning more than 51,000 establishments across 36 states and Union Territories. Within this, more than 3.4 lakh apprentices have already been trained in IT and digital trades, with nearly 2,000 placed in emerging AI-related roles, proof that India's skilling architecture can pivot toward future-facing sectors.

Yet the path here has been anything but linear. Applications under NAPS collapsed to a six-year low of roughly 4.02 lakh in 2025, down more than 90% from a peak of 42.8 lakh in 2022, exposing how quickly enthusiasm can fade without sustained follow-through. A NITI Aayog review released in February 2026 found that of 13.09 lakh apprentices registered in FY2024-25, only about 19% completed their training, with engagement heavily concentrated in a handful of states; Gujarat alone accounted for close to a quarter of all NAPS activity nationally, while most states and UTs together contributed less than 0.001% of the national pool.

The good news is that course correction appears to be underway: following reforms including enhanced monthly stipends of ₹6,800 to ₹12,300 and decriminalisation of minor compliance lapses, NAPS registrations rebounded to an all-time high of 3.06 million in FY2025-26, a 49.3% jump over the previous year. Encouragingly, small and medium enterprises now represent the single largest category of participating establishments at 25.35%, ahead of medium and large enterprises, suggesting that India's skilling push is finally reaching beyond marquee corporates into the businesses that employ the bulk of the workforce.

Opportunities Ahead

The Economic Survey’s National Skill Gap Study offers something valuable beyond diagnosis: a precise map of where effort should now concentrate, particularly around strengthening foundational skills and tightening the link between curriculum and labour market needs. This clarity is itself a form of progress; India now understands its skilling gaps with a granularity that did not exist a decade ago.

This matters enormously given that only 51.25% of India's youth are currently assessed as possessing employable skills, despite nearly 65% of the population being under 35 years, according to the Economic Survey 2023-24. Analysis of the country's roughly 140 million graduates similarly offer a rich, actionable dataset for universities to redesign programmes around real employment outcomes rather than assumptions about what students should want.

The task ahead is to convert this strong foundation into universal practice across every higher education institution. Several priorities stand out.

• Embed vocational modules as compulsory, credit-bearing components within undergraduate degrees, using the National Credit Framework to let students move fluidly between vocational diplomas and academic degrees rather than being locked into one track for life.
• Deepen industry co-ownership of curricula through Sector Skill Councils, building on the momentum already visible in IT, digital trades, and AI-related apprenticeships.
• Scale apprenticeship participation among small and medium enterprises through continued stipend support and simplified compliance, extending reach beyond the current base of over 43 lakh cumulative apprentices toward far higher annual throughput.
• Correct the sharp regional imbalance in apprenticeship uptake by actively expanding outreach into states beyond the current top five, which together account for most national engagement.

International comparison sharpens the case for urgency. In Germany and Switzerland, dual education systems integrate vocational training with formal schooling from an early age, and apprenticeship participation rates are many times higher than India's current levels, with vocational qualifications carrying social prestige equal to that of university degrees.

India's own numbers, while improving, still reflect a system in transition rather than one that has arrived.

Perhaps the most important shift underway is cultural rather than statistical. As enrolment in vocational and technical training climbs and success stories multiply, the old hierarchy that placed university degrees above skill-based learning is beginning to soften. A recent comparison of India's youth employment landscape against global peers noted that educational enrolment has surged impressively in recent years, even as employment quality struggles to keep pace.

This gap is precisely where vocational integration can make its greatest contribution, converting rising education levels into equally rising employability rather than credential inflation without a corresponding rise in livelihoods.

• Author: Shreshth Sharma

(The writer is former director, ICCR and a visiting professor in Culture, Heritage and Art History)