ForumIAS announcing GS Foundation Program for UPSC CSE 2025-26 from 10th August. Click Here for more information.
| Introduction: Contextual Introduction. Body: Write about the need of this progamme and then some measures to efficiently implement this. Conclusion: way forward. |
In a degree apprenticeship program, there is a tripartite contract between an employer, university, and the youth. These apprentices have full-time employment status with the organisations where students do their on-job trainings and the cost of the apprenticeship is covered by the employer and the government. It offers degree from the university as well as multi-year work experience.
Need:
- Skill gap: There is mostly a gap between what the employers are looking for in their future employees and what the fresh university graduate has to offer.
- Changed composition of workforce: Employment in the primary sector (largely, agriculture) reduced from 76% to 46%, while increasing in the secondary sector from 11% to 23% and most significantly, in the tertiary sector from 13% to 31%.
- It can aid in increasing the GER and help achieve the GER target set in the National Education Policy 2020.
The following measures can be applied to strengthen the degree apprentice system in India:
- Learning while earning: Most young Indians can’t pay for building employability due to out-of-pocket. The income support of earning while learning is crucial to raising enrollment and making it more inclusive.
- Learning by doing: The guaranteed workplace and theory involvement can ensure that students develop the current, soft, and theoretical skills because employers integrate a practical and theoretical curriculum with actual doing.
- Flexible learning: Institutions can deliver employability and inclusiveness by combining the different modes of classrooms in varying proportions depending on the needs, abilities, and means of different employers and young job seekers.
- Qualification modularity: Degree apprenticeships can offer academic credit for prior skills and for on-the-job learning and full qualification modularity via certificates, diplomas, and degrees.
Government must ensure that the apprentices meet the minimum skill standards and try to subsidise the stipends of the apprentices. So that ensuring employability and creating an enabling ecosystem where degree apprenticeships have the same prestige value as that of a conventional college degree.
