Are young Indian men starting to give up on college education?

Most Indians believe education will improve their life chances. Young people have therefore been heading to college in ever greater numbers. Ever since the All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) first started releasing its annual reports from 2011-12 onwards, the number of students has increased hugely, from 29.2 million to 45 million in 2023-34.

A 2024 article I wrote for Times Higher Education expressed concern about this rapid growth despite the widely known lack of correlation between higher education and employment in India. Unemployment rates have remained stubbornly high among young educated people for many years, and that isn’t changing. Among 15- to 25-year-olds, graduate unemployment is nearly 40 per cent, and only a small number secure stable salaried employment within a year of graduation.

The persistent disconnect between college education and employment is one reason why Saurabh Mukherjea, founder and CIO of Marcellus Investment Managers, recently started to spread the message that young people “are better off in India not going to university”. Noting that a construction worker in Mumbai earns twice that of a college graduate, he argued that those who do not study beyond high school are often financially better off than those with college degrees.

In the same vein, India’s chief economic adviser, V. Anantha Nageswaran, recently urged young people to think beyond college degrees and focus instead on acquiring practical and professional skills – welding, plumbing, electrical work and carpentry – that may be less prestigious than office jobs but offer strong employment opportunities and cannot be easily replaced by artificial intelligence.

Given this context, it is interesting that AISHE reports for the three most recent years – 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 – show that the growth in student numbers may finally be slowing.

While the total number of students in higher education still rose during that period, from 43.3 million to 45 million, the increase is quite modest compared with the previous decade.

Further, the growth pattern diverges along two axes: level of education and gender. While the number of postgraduates rose by more than 11 per cent, to 6.3 million, the number of undergraduates grew by less than 1.5 per cent. And an increase in undergraduates from 34.1 million in 2021-22 to 34.7 million in 2022-23 was then offset by a slight decline to 34.6 million in 2023-24.

By itself, that downturn is not significant and may be interpreted as a mere temporary blip unless the numbers in subsequent years display the same trend. But the gender data tell a more enduring story. For the first time in a decade, the number of young men attending college stagnated at about 17.9 million in both 2021-22 and 2022-23, before falling to 17.5 million in 2023-24.

By contrast, the number of young women in higher education has continued to increase, from 16.3 million in 2021-22 to 16.8 million in 2022-23 and 17.1 million in 2023-24. The link between higher education and better employment opportunities is no stronger for women than for men. Indeed, while the number of educated women in India is larger than ever before, fewer of them are part of the paid workforce than a decade ago. But many women go college to improve their marriage prospects, so it seems unlikely that there will be any significant decline in their numbers.

But that may change if their potential husbands also turn away from college in large numbers, taking the commentators’ advice and looking elsewhere for workplace preparation, acquiring professional and practical skills.

AISHE reports indicate a continued uptick in the numbers of both men and women enrolling for diplomas, a category that includes technical education at polytechnics, nursing institutes, pharmacy institutions and hotel management and catering institutes. The overall count of diplomas awarded remains relatively low, at about 2 million men and 1.3 million women in 2023-24. But there are reasons to think that young men, in particular, will find vocational education more attractive in the coming years.

First, the rising cost of college education is outstripping affordability. Household incomes have increased at a compound rate of 11.9 per cent a year in the past decade, well behind the 15.7 per cent increase in education spending. And an average household now spends nearly 3 per cent of their income on education, compared with 1.95 per cent in 2014-15.

Unsurprisingly, then, the proportion of men who cited economic pressure for not continuing their studies grew from 58 per cent in 2017 to 72 per cent in 2023, according to the State of Working India 2026 report. The most common reason was the need to enter the workforce to support their families’ incomes. And that was true even for those attending public institutions, which cost a fraction of what private universities do.

But even among those who can afford college education – perhaps with some difficulty, through student loans or the sale of family assets such as property or gold – there is a growing realisation that the returns may not merit the cost. Recently, for instance, there have been reports of even doctoral graduates applying for low-level government jobs with meagre pay. Moreover, in June, India’s Supreme Court stepped in to rule that applicants with high educational qualifications should not claim jobs meant specifically for less-educated applicants, further disincentivising college attendance.

Yet the slowdown in enrolments among young men may actually be a positive development. India has too many mediocre colleges and universities, offering equally mediocre education at high cost and with low employment prospects. If they are forced to close because of low student numbers, no one should lament their demise.

Pushkar is director of the International Centre Goa.