While the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 aims to make postgraduate less ‘rigid’ in the future, students’ interest has already been shifting from the two-year master's programme to shorter and more skill-focused certificate courses, professional diplomas and postgraduate diplomas.
Experts from the field opine that this shift has been due to many factors.
Firstly, industries have been focusing more on skill sets and hands-on experience rather than the candidate’s qualifications. These shorter programmes can help bridge the gap between academic learning and industry requirements.
“There is a lot of emphasis on industry exposure, internships, industry-academia partnership, and many work-integrated programmes are being curated. Even as per reports and our experience, an average person in a technical course has an employability rate of 42 per cent while for a non-technical graduate, it might be as low as 20-22 per cent,” Sumit Kumar, CBO, TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, an HR services company.
What's the opportunity cost?
Another reason that the students are preferring certificate courses and diplomas are because of the high opportunity cost for master’s programmes.
Students and working professionals have also been taking up online master’s courses and certificate programmes as they offer much more flexibility and are also pocket-friendly.
Phalgun Kompalli, Co-founder of upGrad, an online education company that provides these courses, said “I think people are now evaluating the opportunity cost of two-year campus education very seriously. Very few people have the luxury to say that I will drop everything in my life, personal and professional, and spend 20-40 lakh on MBA or any master’s degree on campus. There was always this opportunity cost and for working professionals, it's even more.”
“On the other hand, these other options that are very credible have come up where this opportunity cost has been significantly reduced. If someone wants to do an MBA, now they can evaluate that maybe they do not need a complete degree but specific requirement courses like digital marketing or product management. There is a large set of people who are gravitated towards these upskilling courses for higher packages and employability with low cost,” Kompalli added.
A few industries have also started to collaborate with higher education institutes and ed-tech platforms to provide their employees an opportunity to pursue ‘on-the-job master’s programmes’ which is a work-integrated learning programme conducted on the industry campus itself.
Dr Sriram KV, Associate Director, Industry Liaison Placement and Practice School at Manipal Institute of Technology, explained, “We run a programme with one of the Bengaluru-based companies wherein our teachers go there and teach the employees. Even companies these days look at educating their employees so they do not leave the company and are still upgraded to the next level. This is the first such postgraduate programme that we are offering to industry but we have undergraduate and diploma programmes with some industries as well."
