Education and Career Counseling

The issues relating to career opportunity are one of the most important facets of a young mind.  Education in India in earlier times in the decades of 60s, 70s and 80s used to be mostly detached from career and job opportunities. There was also lack of organized guidance except possibly from parents and senior family members.  Therefore, we see a large number of cases where type of job and basic qualification a person possesses are totally divorced. This sometimes has raised serious concern about the utility of education per se.

However, during last decade things have started changing dramatically. Today’s youth are more focused, knowledgeable, inquisitive, and ambitious. One of the strengths of India as a country is existence of a huge working force whose median age is in 20s. This very demographic profile has created a significant opportunity as well as concern for all. This is significant as this strong and huge workforce can change the destiny of the country and the envisaged consistent growth rate of 10 per cent is easily achievable. But at the same time the large manpower can itself lead to disastrous consequence if not channelized properly. A recent study also shows that India is likely to become a country with world’s highest unemployment rate. The reasons are obvious: we have the world’s largest population with one of the highest number young people but majority of them are without right skills needed for modern jobs.

The contribution of agriculture to India’s GDP over last few years has come down dramatically though the people living in rural places roughly remain the same at 65-70 per cent. Per capita income of rural people hovers around an abysmally low figure of $ 1 per day. Creation of agro industries, reforms in agriculture sector, equipping the vast majority of the younger people with right vocational skills are some of the major challenges before the Indian government. Providing right skills to huge urban young population who come out of the schools / colleges (10^th & 12^th standard) is the other major challenge. The Indian corporate sector spends more time in providing jobs to highly qualified new entrants and salary adjustment for the already highly paid employees. The thinking process for vocationalization of the young urban process is yet to commence. The other area where there is no concerted attention at all is to promote entrepreneurial spirit including social entrepreneurship where lots of opportunities exist. What we need is out of the box thinking and innovative approaches rather than beaten track ideas.

It is in this context that the concept of educational & career counseling is increasingly assuming more importance. Educational & career counseling in an organized manner is relatively a new phenomenon in India. One requires huge exposure to the world as a whole to be an effective counselor. Besides being a person with substantial understanding on a global scale of the economy, educational fields, emerging areas of opportunity, and a good psychologist, a good counselor is one who has execution ability of:

1. Aligning a student’s career goals and objectives with available economic opportunities not only in India but on a global basis,

2. Assessing basic competencies / skill-sets of a student and allying them with job functions and / or higher education in the right field,

3. Suggesting the most important field of study or career suitable for a candidate considering all facts of the case.

There is nothing right or wrong in an absolute context in the parlance of counseling. Counseling is nothing but an expert opinion given to a particular student in response to his / her query on a specific question (career or education related). The student needs to read the answer carefully, weigh pros and cons, discuss with senior family members and then take final decision. If necessary, the student should approach counselor with another round of queries. 

Through this series we would try to look into the career aspirations of young people and match them with the available opportunities.

Counseling will be provided by Dr A K Sen Gupta, an eminent educationist in the landscape of education in India. He has more than two decades of corporate experience and an equal number of years in the field of academics, research and consulting. He is currently the Director of SIES College of Management Studies (SIESCOMS), Navi Mumbai. Prior to this he was the Director with S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR). During 1990s he was also associated with the World Bank as a Consultant and as a faculty member with National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM), Pune. All career / education related questions / queries should be sent to aksengupta51@hotmail.com.