THE INDIAN EMPLOYABILITY CHALLENGE AND AN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING SOLUTION

Employability.life is working in partnership with Federation University Australia to bring a unique programme to India, designed to enhance student employability in the digital age through experiential education. By replicating the workplace environment and its focus on task delivery, Experiential Microcredentials (XPMCs) combine with a traditional degree to maximise outcomes in both learning and employment. Dr Annurag Batra of BW Businessworld sat down with the key figures in this transformative new approach.

- Dr Annurag Batra

How has your past experience helped you in introducing Employability.life to India?

Manish Malhotra: It all started when I began this business twenty years ago in Australia, where I finished my PhD and set up a technology college in association with, and affiliated to, Federation University Australia. We experienced terrific demand for almost twenty years, with over 30,000 Indian students being taught through our colleges, but in the last few years, we’ve found that the market was changing dramatically, predominantly because of the new digital economy.

Automation in a country like India threatens up to 69 per cent of future jobs, and the challenge was to bring this programme to India with the same quality as in Australia but at the Indian price level, which was not an easy problem to solve.

We came up with a product called Experiential Microcredentials (XPMCs), where we are delivering projects that are co-created with industry experts and higher education institutes, from our Australia and UK offices. We are embedding this into the Indian ecosystem through educational institutions here so that students can take advantage of experiential training and have real-life experiences even before completing their qualifications.

So far we have signed up 68 colleges across the country, and hopefully more going forward. We want to create graduates who are ready to work!

What has changed in the skills and employability space due to the Covid-19 pandemic?