Indian families invest in higher education, trusting it will deliver good jobs for their children. But with jobs growing scarce, work that is available matching neither qualifications nor aspirations, and graduate earnings stagnating, this bargain has broken down.
For nearly four decades, Indian families have invested unprecedented sums in higher education, convinced that degrees will deliver secure, salaried employment. Today, that promise is increasingly difficult to keep. As graduate earnings stagnate and salaried jobs become scarce, parents and young graduates find themselves in a dilemma. Should they wait for the kind of salaried jobs that justify years of educational investment, and if so, for how long? Or should they accept whatever work is available, even if it falls well short of their aspirations? 1
As of 2023, India had 63 million graduates, a 12-fold increase from the 5 million recorded about 40 years earlier.
The ‘cockroach’ protests captured this growing frustration. What began as protests over irregularities in examinations and paper leaks quickly became a broader expression of disappointment with an education system and labour market that no longer seem able to deliver on their promises, giving voice, in more ways than one, to this disheartened demographic.
College Expansion
Youth unemployment is not a new phenomenon in India, as the State of Working India 2026 report shows (Azim Premji University 2026). In 2023, about 40% of young graduates were unemployed; not very different from the 35% recorded four decades earlier in 1983. Among graduates aged between 25 and 29 years, the unemployment rate was lower—20%. But this was still higher than that of the older cohorts and non-graduates. More importantly, this 20% in 2023 was much higher than what it was 40 years ago in 1983—12%. This indicates that, for the older cohort of graduates, the incidence of unemployment is higher now.
The crisis of graduate employment today is magnified for two reasons. First, the substantially higher unemployment rate for the 25- to 29-year-olds today than in 1983. And, second, the expansion of higher education and increased tertiary enrolment rates means that the absolute number of the affected demographic is far larger than it was in 1983.
As of 2023, India had 63 million graduates, a 12-fold increase from the 5 million recorded about 40 years earlier. An increase in the number of colleges and a steady increase in household incomes during this period made education far more accessible and affordable. Consequently, enrolment rates climbed steadily—among men aged 15 to19 years, it rose from 49% in 1983-84 to 73% in 2023-24; among women, the increase was even steeper, from 38% to 68% over the same period.
In 2023, the top three employers of young men, whether graduates or not, were the same—agriculture, trade, and construction.
For most families, higher education offered the promise of a secure job with a high salary for their children. The huge increase in salaries, particularly in the services sector, around the period of the economic boom between 2003 and 2008, fueled largely by information technology (IT), further buttressed this promise. From 2004 to 2011, average earnings of graduate men aged 20 to 29 years rose to more than Rs. 20,000 per month in real terms, and grew at a rate of 4% per annum. Higher education was naturally seen as a pathway into these jobs, justifying the large expenditure both in terms of money and time.
Education accounts for a large share of household expenditure. Professional degrees such as engineering and medicine are expensive. In 2017-18, a medical degree cost approximately Rs. 97,400 and an engineering degree about Rs. 72,000 annually. For families in the lower end of the income spectrum, this cost is anywhere between 1.2 and 0.8 times their annual per capita expenditure. Given this substantial investment, e, it is only natural that households will wait for the right kind of job—one that justifies both the forgone earnings during education and the direct financial cost of obtaining a degree.
Waiting For What?
Yet, the labour market offers few such opportunities. In his ethnographic essay, “Timepass: Youth, Class, and Time among Unemployed Young Men in India”, Craig Jeffrey, writing more than a decade ago, talks about two kinds of waiting (Jeffrey 2010). One, the waiting for success by Indian parents as they invest in their child’s education in anticipation of securing a good job in the future. And the other, the waiting of young men and women for the salaried job of their aspirations. In the India of today, these two forms of waiting have come to collide as college graduates and their parents wait for jobs that do not seem to materialise.
In many ways, it is this collision that we now see taking place in the “cockroach” protests. India’s youth see themselves as victims of an educational system, a labour market, and a state that has failed them….
https://www.theindiaforum.in/education/failed-promises-higher-education-india
+++++++++++++
भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा या RSS का कोई छुपा हुआ एजेंडा? Indian Knowledge System: प्रो. पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल
University Grants Commission aiding the cult of personality
Methodical destruction of the education system
From The Bench To Barbs: ‘Cockroach’ Slur On Critics
Political parties must find common cause with youth, worker protests
There is a quiet and visible crisis in higher education in India that runs deep: Deepak Nayyar
Ruchir Joshi: Out of depth – India’s anti-knowledge brigade
Where Are the ‘Don Quixotes’ of Indian Academia?
Witch-hunt against Tejaswini Desai highlights dangers of being a teacher in India today
Professor’s Harassment by ABVP Shows Near-Complete Takeover of Universities by RSS-BJP
After the truth-shower 