India produces millions of graduates every year, yet employers continue to report acute talent shortages. The disconnect lies not in enrolment or aspiration, but in employability. TeamLease EdTech’s Report, ‘From Degree Factories to Employability Hubs’ highlights a critical reality: nearly 75% of India’s higher education institutions (HEIs) are still not industry-ready. For an economy aiming to become a global talent powerhouse, this gap poses a serious challenge. The findings of this report highlight why hiring-ready talent remains in short supply—and what must change to bridge the gap.
India’s higher education employability challenge
The report is based on a nationwide survey of 1,000+ colleges and universities, including public, private, deemed, autonomous, and affiliated institutions. Despite growing awareness around skills and outcomes, most HEIs continue to function as degree factories rather than employability hubs.
One of the most telling indicators is placement performance. Graduate employability languishes, with only 16.7% of institutions able to place more than 75% of their students within six months of graduation. For the majority, placement outcomes remain modest, fragmented, or inconsistent. This reinforces a key concern underscoring the deep disconnect between higher education and the job market: degrees alone do not guarantee job readiness.
Curriculum–Industry misalignment is the core issue
Curriculum relevance remains the single biggest barrier to graduate employability in India, reinforcing the persistent skills gap in India’s labour market. The report reveals that only 8.6% of higher education institutions have an industry-aligned curriculum across all programmes, while more than 50% of HEIs report no meaningful alignment with industry needs at all. This disconnect results in students graduating with largely theoretical knowledge and limited exposure to current tools, technologies, and real workplace practices, making it difficult to produce truly job-ready graduates. From an employer’s perspective, this misalignment increases onboarding and training costs, delays productivity, and weakens talent pipelines. Compounding the challenge, the report notes that over 60% of institutions have not integrated industry-recognised certifications into their academic offerings, missing a critical opportunity to bridge the gap between education and employment through practical, market-validated skills.
Experiential learning remains weak and uneven
Experiential learning—encompassing internships, apprenticeships, and live industry projects—is widely acknowledged as a critical driver of internships and employability in India, yet its adoption remains limited and uneven across institutions. The report shows that only 9.4% of higher education institutions mandate internships across all programmes, while nearly 38% lack any structured internship integration, highlighting the weak state of experiential learning in India. Further, just 9.7% of institutions embed live industry projects into academic coursework, restricting students’ exposure to real-world problem-solving. As a result, many graduates enter the job market without meaningful workplace experience, making the transition from campus to corporate roles slow and uncertain. For employment platforms and recruiters, this gap in work-integrated learning explains why candidates often struggle with role readiness despite holding formal qualifications.
Limited industry participation in classrooms
Industry engagement within Indian campuses remains the exception rather than the norm, limiting the impact of industry–academia collaboration on graduate outcomes. The report finds that only 7.5% of institutions have implemented the Professor of Practice model across multiple programmes, while around 15% engage industry experts in only select departments, leaving most students without sustained exposure to industry insights. This narrow level of employer engagement in education restricts students’ understanding of real-world business challenges, employer expectations, and emerging job roles. Strengthening classroom-to-corporate linkages through deeper participation of practitioners and employers is therefore critical to improving employability and hiring outcomes.
Alumni Networks: An untapped employability asset
Alumni networks have the potential to be powerful drivers of graduate employability through mentorship, career guidance, referrals, and direct hiring support, yet they remain significantly underutilised across India’s higher education system. The report indicates that only 5.4% of institutions have highly engaged alumni ecosystems, limiting the impact of alumni networks and jobs on student outcomes. Weak alumni participation reduces access to informal hiring channels, professional networks, and role-specific insights—gaps that are felt most acutely by first-generation learners and students from non-metro and underserved regions. In the absence of strong alumni engagement, many graduates struggle to navigate the transition from education to employment despite having formal qualifications. For employment platforms and graduate hiring ecosystems, deeper alumni integration can play a critical role in improving candidate visibility, strengthening referral-led hiring, and enhancing placement success by connecting students to real-world opportunities and employer networks.
From Degrees to Jobs: What Needs to Change
The report makes it clear that India’s graduate employability challenge is not driven by a lack of intent among higher education institutions, but by system design gaps that prevent education from translating into sustained employment outcomes. While many colleges and universities articulate employability as a priority, only a small subset have embedded it meaningfully into their academic and operating models. Institutions that consistently perform better on placements demonstrate a deliberate shift from input-led education to outcome-led employability frameworks, where industry relevance, work exposure, and hiring outcomes are treated as core institutional responsibilities rather than post-course add-ons. These institutions share four defining characteristics:
- Industry-aligned curricula co-created with employers to reflect current and emerging skill requirements
- Mandatory internships and applied learning embedded within degree programmes to ensure workplace readiness
- Active employer partnerships that extend beyond placement season into curriculum design, mentoring, and project-based learning
- Outcome-based performance metrics, focused on employability and career progression rather than enrolment or completion alone
To truly evolve from degree-granting institutions into employability hubs, HEIs must institutionalise job outcomes as a central mandate—measured, monitored, and continuously improved—rather than treating them as an optional or downstream objective.
Why This Matters for Employment Platforms
For employment platforms, staffing firms, and recruiters, the findings underscore a critical market reality: while the supply of degrees continues to expand rapidly, the availability of employable, job-ready talent remains constrained. This mismatch increases hiring timelines, inflates training costs, and places greater pressure on employers to bridge skill gaps internally. Addressing this challenge requires deeper, system-level collaboration between employers, higher education institutions, and workforce platforms—moving beyond transactional hiring toward integrated talent ecosystems. To effectively narrow the employability gap, stakeholders must work together to:
- Signal in-demand skills clearly to students and institutions, ensuring curricula and training pathways reflect real-time labour market needs
- Enable work-integrated learning pathways, including internships, apprenticeships, and project-based roles that allow candidates to build practical experience alongside formal education
- Match candidates based on competencies rather than credentials alone, shifting hiring decisions toward skills, experience, and role readiness
As India’s labour market continues to evolve toward skills-based hiring, institutions and platforms that transition from degree-centric models to employability-first ecosystems will play a defining role in shaping the future of graduate recruitment and workforce readiness.
The report ‘From Degree Factories to Employability Hubs’ makes one message unequivocally clear: India’s higher education system stands at a decisive inflection point. While access to education has expanded and degree attainment continues to rise, employability outcomes have not kept pace with the evolving needs of the labour market. The challenge is no longer about producing more graduates, but about producing job-ready talent equipped with relevant skills, practical experience, and industry exposure. Bridging this gap will require a fundamental shift in how success is defined—away from enrolment and completion metrics toward measurable employment outcomes. India’s move toward becoming a skills-first economy, mandates institutions and ecosystems to prioritise employability over credentials. This will define the future of sustainable workforce development.
