Employability Skill Gap among Business Management Students: Role of Management Institutes in Bridging the Gap

Abstract

Indian higher education sector has witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of professional educational institutions since the liberalization. Though there is a quantum growth in the number of Universities and institutions, the country has to undergo drastic changes in the educational reformation to meet the competitions of the global employability scenario. This article examines the challenges faced by all the stakeholders of business management education of business institutes in South India, concerns in student's employability and Placement. The employers of different sectors of industry had vividly expressed their concern about this gap of expected and actual skills of graduates in various forums and meetings with discussion on skills improvement. Though there are umpteen articles on this current situation, the mass proliferation of the B-schools augmented by the huge under-employment problems is not addressed with right policy or regulations from any side of management education framework. The purpose of this study is to understand the causes of this gap and the dearth of skills which management graduates attain from the academia. As India's manpower will be the highest in the years to come in the global Human Resources graph, it is inevitable that these graduates should attain the right mix of skills. The literature from various studies is analyzed and discussed with definite solutions to overcome this and to alleviate the gap with insights from employability models.