Majority Of Indian Higher Education Institutions Still Not Industry-Ready
As employability becomes a priority across Indian higher education, outcomes remain uneven on the ground. A new TeamLease Edtech report, `From Degree Factories to Employability Hubs’, shows that despite a growing emphasis on employability, nearly 75 per cent of Indian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are still not industry-ready, and only 16.67 per cent of institutions achieve placement rates of 76–100 per cent within six months of graduation. Structural gaps are pronounced with just 5.44 per cent reporting highly engaged alumni networks, 23.02 per cent involving industry professionals in teaching, and over 60 per cent have not explored embedding industry certifications into their programmes.
The report highlights a clear roadmap for HEIs to achieve the desired intent, i.e., employability. Curriculum relevance has emerged as the biggest structural constraint. Only 8.6 per cent of institutions report full industry alignment across programmes, while 16.9 per cent say they are partially aligned in select courses. In contrast, more than half (51.01 per cent) acknowledge they are not aligned at all, and less than one-fifth (19.1 per cent) say alignment efforts are still under implementation, leaving a majority of institutions without effective industry linkage at scale.
Shantanu Rooj, Founder & CEO, TeamLease Edtech
Commenting on the findings, Shantanu Rooj, Founder and CEO, TeamLease Edtech, shared, “What stands out in this report is the clear gap between aspiration and execution. While employability remains a central objective, a significant number of institutions are yet to fully align their curricula with industry needs, build strong employer partnerships, or integrate recognised industry certifications into their programmes. This reveals a system that is structurally underprepared to deliver the outcomes it aims to achieve. At its core, this is a system design challenge. If employability is truly the goal, curriculum co-creation with industry, mandatory internships, applied learning through live projects, and formal employer partnerships must become fundamental to how institutions function and are evaluated, not optional add-ons.”
The analysis further sheds light on experiential learning, which is widely seen as critical to job readiness, but still lacks structure and standardization. Internships are integrated across all programmes in just 9.4 per cent of institutions and within select programmes in 17.4 per cent institutions, taking the overall adoption to 26.8 per cent. Meanwhile, only 9.68 per cent of institutions use live industry projects, with 37.8 per cent of institutions lacking in internship integration. This indicates that a large share of students continue to graduate with limited exposure to real-world work environments, reducing opportunities to build practical, job-relevant skills before entering the employment market.
Another underutilised lever is alumni engagement. While alumni networks are often cited as a powerful bridge to industry, only 5.44 per cent of institutions report highly engaged alumni communities, and 15.09 per cent describe them as fairly engaged. For the majority, alumni relationships remain limited, minimal or absent. This weakens access to informal hiring channels, mentorship and industry referrals that typically play a significant role in early-career job placement and career navigation for graduates.
The study also points to limited industry participation in classroom teaching. Only 7.56 per cent of institutions integrate Professors of Practice across multiple programmes, while another 15.46 per cent restrict such engagement to a few departments. This leaves the majority of HEIs without sustained exposure to current industry practices, further constraining the relevance of classroom learning to workplace requirements.
Taken together, the findings suggest that while employability has moved to the centre of institutional strategy, execution remains fragmented across curriculum design, industry collaboration and experiential learning. Without structural changes in how programmes are built and delivered, the employability factor will merely become a buzzword rather than a reality.
TeamLease EdTech is India’s leading learning and employability solutions company. It helps HEIs launch, run and manage their own online programmes, improve the employability of their students through their apprenticeship programmes, and helps employers build talent supply chains, along with improving employee productivity. TeamLease EdTech has exclusive partnerships with over 70 of India’s largest universities and premier Institutions across 16 Indian states, and it trains seven lakh students on its platform through nine Indian languages, works with 2,200 corporates in their upskilling/skilling initiatives.
