Study highlights poor outcomes for graduates of Indian higher education
- A new report shows that India’s higher education system and labour market are not sufficiently aligned
- Degree-holding Indian women are often unable to secure jobs outside of agriculture, mostly in the informal economy
- Men’s enrolment is declining, mainly because immediate household needs prevent them from being able to wait for the ROI of a degree
Across economies advanced and developing, young degree-holders are finding it more difficult than in the past to secure jobs commensurate with their skills – or even to find a job at all. A new report, Azim Premji University (APU)’s The State of Working India 2026, reveals that the trend is especially pronounced in India, where families are increasingly questioning the ROI of going to university due to uncertain postgraduate outcomes.
The link between higher education enrolment and jobs
The number of students enrolled in India’s higher education system has more than tripled in the past 15 years to a Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) of 28%, and the government’s target is a GER of 50% by 2035. But the pace of enrolment growth is slowing, and it is doing so in tandem with a slowing of income gains for graduates since 2017.
The APU report offers some sobering statistics:
- Under 7% of graduates in India secure permanent salaried jobs within one year of graduation.
- Of those who do, less than 4% land white-collar positions.
- 40% of graduates aged 15–25 and 20% of those aged 25–29 are unemployed.
- Of the roughly 5 million graduates India produces each year, barely 2.8 million find jobs, with even fewer securing salaried work.
- While on average, graduates still make double the amount of money over the course of their lifetime than those without higher education, the pace of wage growth for them has slowed since 2017.
- The proportion of young men in school is declining – from 38% in 2017 to 34% in 2024.
Tenuous pathways from education to good jobs for women
Among poorer Indian families, the motivation to save precious income for university studies has always been to escape informal and/or poorly paid occupations in agriculture and construction. Between 2007 and 2017, the share of students from India’s poorest households enrolled in higher education rose from 8% to 17%, and while this happened, a growing number of new jobs were created outside of agriculture.
Still, nearly half of all work remains in the agricultural sector, and almost two-thirds of all Indian women working are employed in that sector. Many of them are the first in their family to hold a degree – and they invested in that degree precisely to get out of agricultural work.
A March 2026 article by the BBC sums up the differing outcomes of segments of female graduates:
“At one end, a small but growing cohort of educated and skilled women is entering salaried roles in IT, automobile manufacturing, and business services. At the other, far larger end, most of the increase is in self-employment and unpaid or home-based work, often within households or family enterprises. This signals necessity rather than opportunity. The result is a statistical rise in participation that masks a qualitative divide: opportunity at the top, compulsion at the bottom.”
In March 2025, The Washington Post interviewed 27-year-old Geetanjali Devi, 27, who holds a bachelor’s degree in history. Now, Geetanjali works on her family’s rural farm in the state of Bihar near the border with Nepal. Her husband is not with her: “Like the majority of men in the village, he spends most of the year working construction in the southern state of Kerala, earning $8 a day more than 1,000 miles away.”
Men are also losing hope
Disappointing job prospects are dampening Indian men’s demand for higher education. APU’s study notes that in 2017, 58% of young men cited economic pressure as the reason for not continuing their studies. Only five years later in 2023, this proportion rose significantly to 72%.
Without a degree, more Indian men are turning to informal jobs to meet urgent household needs for cash. They cannot wait to see if the economic returns of higher education will pay off over the long term.
More industry linkages are needed
As reported in a January 2026 University World News article, new survey results from India’s TeamLease EdTech, a provider of employability solutions and educational technology for higher education, show that “75% of higher education institutions in India are not adequately prepared to meet industry expectations.” Only 7% of the 1,000 representatives from wide swath of institutions surveyed said they were achieving placement rates above 75%.
According to the report, ‘”industry relevance is often treated as an add-on rather than a fundamental design principle,” resulting in graduates who emerge with “theoretical knowledge that lacks direct applicability in a modern workplace shaped by technology, automation, and evolving business models.”
There are, of course, high-quality institutions that do prioritise industry linkages, but wealthier students have a much better chance of (1) affording these and the higher-ROI courses such as engineering they offer, and (2) obtaining good jobs as a result of this and their social connections to those in power.
The national urgency
The APU report notes:
“India’s youth population, defined as those between the ages of 15 to 29, is the largest in the world. The 367 million people in this age group account for a third of the country’s working age population. The extent to which this large, increasingly educated and aspirational cohort is productively absorbed into the labour market will determine whether this massive, and continuing demographic dividend translates into an economic dividend.”
Much will depend on whether India can provide more linkages from education to good jobs for segments other than the wealthiest students. If not, the number of degree-holding women left on farms to manage subsistence agriculture will increase, and the number of men who trust higher education to increase their income prospects quickly, rather than over a lifetime, will decrease.
The urgency is real. The Washington Post reports: “Indians are now poorer than Hondurans on a per capita basis. More than half of those of working age are unable to find a place in the formal economy.”
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