Educating Youth to Launch and Sustain Business Start-Ups

Abstract

The report ‘Youth Employment and Unemployment Scenario’ says ‘Young people in employment are actually overqualified for the job they are doing and therefore society is losing their valuable skills and forfeiting stronger productivity growth that would have been achieved, had these young people been employed at their appropriate level of qualification’. The critical question that arises from this is ‘Do we have substantial focus on Productivity of Youth or just addressing the gap of job market by employing more productive youth in low productivity required jobs?’ Our country has been struggling to bridge the gap between education and employment. There has been significant debate on mismatch between the productive and skilled youth and needs of employers. However, there is also much noise about orienting youth towards youth entrepreneurship. The latter seems to be the only solution to job creation and enhanced employability.Now, when ecosystem for youth entrepreneurship is favorable and government is supportive of enterprise creation, it is equally important to educate potential entrepreneurs, predominantly students. Government of India’s mission for start-up creation is boosting faith of making an entrepreneurial nation rather than create employees for existing organizations. This gives an opportunity to academic institutions to experiment with courses and programs that lead towards start-up creation. The article highlights proposed interventions to improve rate of start-ups n academic campuses.