Indian MBAs Are Becoming Less Employable: Report

Indian MBA graduates have lost their edge and there has been a drop in their employment over the last few years, a new report suggests.

According to the India Skills Report by Wheelbox, employability of Indian MBA graduates has seen a 3% drop over the last year.

Annually about 3,60,000 MBA students pass out from 4000 B-schools in India and 61% are unemployable due to skill gaps and lesser work experience, the study says.

The report also shows that after the employability of Indian engineering graduates became a concern, All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) came in to rescue and took several measures to improve engineering education. This resulted in 52% of Indian engineers being able to find jobs. The rest 48% of engineers remain unemployed despite the Indian government launching various employment schemes in manufacturing sectors under its ambitious “Make in India” mission.

“1.5 million engineers pass out every year but only 52% are employable, highest employable population across domains,” the report noted.

The report further reveals that the reason behind MBA students getting less and less employable over the course of time in India is mainly because of institutions undertaking students who have not qualified for the entrance test.

“MBA colleges are enrolling students even if the student has not appeared for any of the MBA entrance tests. Drop in quality of student intake over years due to negligence in the student selection process and lack of industry internship programs or low attendance in industry internship programs are reasons for this drop among many others. A stringent approach is the need of the hour to improve overall employability situation across the nation by regulatory bodies like AICTE, UGC, AIMA, and others,” the study said.

Dr. Raveendranath Nayak, Director & Professor of Manipal University said, “MBA students must also know their soft skills which are identified as equally important for achieving success in managerial career,” the reported noted.

Amit Malik, Chief People Operations and Customer Services Officer, Aviva Life Insurance said, ‘Today an Engineering or MBA degree does not necessarily lead to a job, much less to a stable career. Skill development needs to start at the school level and education needs to be tailored to ‘future’ needs. There is a need to act, and act fast, lest we lose our demographic advantage!”

One of the major steps in the path of getting employed is getting the right internship and the survey shows that only 84 percent of students are able to take up internship opportunity in India, 81.1 percent MBA students go for the same.

The report also suggests a gap between the ratio of male and female students in MBA education, with 53.35 percent of the MBA students found to be male with women students accounting for the rest. Moreover, female “employability in post-graduation courses (MBA & MCA) is higher as compared to graduation courses but this does not reflect in the hiring intent of organizations,” the report said.