A recent report published widely in the local press suggested that there is a massive dip in the number of enrollments in the valley colleges. This is a matter of grave concern as education in the building block of any society. The number of students taking admissions in the various colleges of the valley is emblematic of the health of our education sector. A sharp dip undoubtedly is a clear cut signal that something is definitely wrong.
Interestingly the college’s teaching courses like Engineering, Medicine, Bachelors in computer Sciences the dip is not that pronounced. It goes to show perhaps that a good majority of the youth are going outside Kashmir to enroll themselves in these job oriented courses. There is a dire need to inculcate job oriented courses in our colleges. The general line humanities, commerce and Science subjects are kind of passe now and unless you want to go deep into research or want to be an educator the returns in these general line subjects are not enough. The government needs to take this report seriously and act on it. We need colleges were students are trained to make a career for themselves, the old idea of making them better humans is just not good enough in the contemporary competitive times.
One more factor worry pondering is that the tourism, logistics and the allayed horticulture industries are beginning to boom in the valley. A lot of students feel to do gig jobs immediately after clearing their 12th examinations to earn some money. A lot of youth start earning good money by commercialising their social media handles.
However, it must be borne in mind that times have been tough and many youth feel it is important to start earning at a young age. As a consequence of that thing youth either do not enroll in colleges but drop out in the first or second year. There were programs like UDAAN and Himayat providing an alternate platform for such drop outs. The current government needs to refocus on those programs to provide basic communication skills and IT training to thousands of youth so that they can find a suitable foothold for themselves in the various corporate houses of the country.
The new chief minister of the union territory must take up this matter on priority and get to the bottom of it. We want our youth in colleges studying the various job-oriented courses that can help them start their career immediately after completion of the course.
