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Why we Killed our Android Program (and what we learnt)

Why we Killed our Android Program (and what we learnt)

Updated on 25 November, 2022

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• 11 min read

With successful programs like entrepreneurship, digital marketing, product management and data analytics already running, it was time for us at UpGrad to think about the launch of a new program. After doing some preliminary market research, we decided that this would be in the area of developing Android Apps.

Reconnaissance

So, first things first! We know you are probably expecting to hear that we didn’t gauge the market well enough. But the truth is, we started the process with extensive market research.
In order to identify the challenges which are faced by recruiters while recruiting Android developers from the existing talent pool, we interviewed a number of senior leaders. We knew that getting their point of view on this talent pool and what they felt was lacking in the industry; was a crucial first step for us to understand the market we were about to deep-dive into.
Here are some of the responses we got from these leaders:

“Android developers must appreciate the full spectrum of android OS and not focus on only building UI heavy apps; which is the problem with current android developers” – Aurobinda Nanda, Head of Product Engineering, Happiest Minds

“Finding Android developers who can build professional, Android apps that are optimized and function well at scale is a massive challenge” – Akash Sureka, VP Mobility, Persistent Systems

“Android developers are as responsible for testing their apps as for developing them. Most mobile teams are lean and follow the continuous integration approach which doesn’t leave too much scope for full-fledged Quality Assurance teams. Not everyone in the current talent pool understands and appreciates this” – Vishwesh Jirgale, R&D Head, Microsoft

From the horse’s mouth

Once we knew what recruiters thought, it was time for us to move to the next step. We interviewed present-day Android developers to learn about challenges in their jobs, how they transitioned to Android, what was the motivation to do so, what does a typical work day look like, how satisfied they were with their jobs; etc:

We realized that the demand for skilled Android developers is extremely high in the market, and increasingly so.
Android developers typically switch jobs every one to two years.
They have the option to work remotely.
They see their code materializing in the form of a tangible app which has a direct impact on their customers and hence, developers’ job satisfaction level is high.
There is great variance in the skill-sets of Android developers across different organisations.

A picture starts emerging

Based on interviews with recruiters, current Android developers and competition analysis, we came up with the broad features for our program. It was now time for us to move on to interviewing the most important set of people, our TG, (target group or audience i.e., direct, potential consumers of the program) and testing out these features/program.
There were and are several reports available online which establish the need for an Android program, featuring the Android job market as a booming one by 2020 and beyond, the trends for which are already beginning to show. Given this, we just wanted to talk to our TG and know if they were willing to learn Android through the online medium and pay for it? What were the pain points, if any? Which of our features did they appreciate?

Meet our buyers

We spoke to two different sets of potential TG.
While talking to professionals, we realized that people who are not into actual coding or development were bored with their jobs and wanted to move to active coding. Android, being a program with a very low entry barrier, was one of the fields they were looking to enter. They also wanted to learn only for a certain amount of time in the week, rather than full-time.
After talking to such professionals, and pitching to them the features of this program, we realized that they were willing to pay for it. They were ready to register for the program and pay for it after two months – when the program would be launched.

We also spoke to our next set of TG, which was mainly students. While talking to them, we realized that:

They were aware of the latest happenings in Android,
Wanted to learn Android,
Were too confused to learn via the free courses available online,
Some preferred workshop formats whereas others understood the importance of more rigor and quality,
Some preferred offline whereas others were comfortable with the online way of learning.

We told them about the program, mentioned the features and they expressed interest to register and pay for the program. However, in this entire process, what we completely neglected was:
There is a huge difference in committing for a later date of payment vs willingness/committing to pay immediately.”

Roadblocks begin

We realize now that we should have instead asked them whether they would commit for immediate payment. That would have given us a clearer, more accurate picture.
Another thing we missed here, and should have questioned, was that even though students expressed interest to learn, did they have the time to learn?
Would they focus more on campus-based job placements, tests/examinations and other activities, rather than invest extra time in learning a new technology?
Do they realize the importance of learning a new technology while still in college?
These were a few questions, the answer to each of which we assumed was a yes, since the students said that they would register and pay for the course. However, students themselves did not take into account the time commitment required and ended up committing to a later date since it was an easy fix.

Other successes can be distracting

Since we got a good response for the program in the interviews, we decided to evaluate the competition and proceed.
We spoke to offline players in Mumbai and got the total number of people they cater to, projected the national offline numbers basis that and combined it with a few online competitor numbers to come up with a business case for the program.
In order to ensure the best possible experience for students, we partnered with the best in the industry and roped in mentors from various companies like ClearTax, SnapDeal, BookMyShow, Swiggy and many more.
We were also named Google’s official training partner for Android and also brought on board one of Google’s developer expert, to help develop our curriculum.

Marketing – a big slice of the pie

It was now time to begin marketing our product and figure out the channels that work.
The first channel we tried were ‘webinars.’ We organised webinars around ‘Careers in Android’ and called the leads (those viewing/visiting the platform) to ask if they were interested in the program. We briefed them about all the features exactly as you would do while you pitch the program and informed them of the price-point; along with the program commencement date – a month later.

Here’s the response we got:

Here, interested means that a person has exclusively said ‘Yes, I am interested in registering for this paid program on Android Development.’ With this overwhelming response, we concluded that this channel is bound to work however we were not able to get any conversions (get leads to transition to a paid customer) from the webinars after the program was actually launched.
At this point of time, we did not have our program page up and running, along with the payment gateway to monitor whether people actually paid.
What we could have done was create a simple landing page with all the features and monitored applications/inbound inquiries to re-validate the data.
Next, we came up with a plan of organizing seminars-cum-entrance test in colleges to make students aware of ‘Android as a Career’ and get applications from students based on this activity.
For this, we waited for the program page to be up and running so we could validate this channel. We pursued this channel once the content production had already begun and online marketing was ongoing.
What we realized after reaching 900 students, was that majority of the students are interested in Android but have no plans of learning it now.
They were too casual about their career to think about investing their free time after college into learning a new technology rather than enjoying the college life.
This conclusion could have been reached earlier had we done either a quantitative research or just created a simple landing page and monitored inbound student inquiries through conducting seminars, as a part of market research itself.
In parallel, we had online marketing campaigns running for both sets of TGs. Soon after analyzing the data, we realized that while the cost per application submitted was within our budget, the conversion was too low, which led to a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC).

The decision is made

This was the point when we realized that the two biggest channels of customer acquisition, which we were relying on, had failed to yield results.

We decided to tweak online marketing and try it out again. This time the cost per application submitted shot up so high that we required a 25% conversion rate to achieve the required CAC.
This was when we checked for offline partnerships, email databases, offline workshops for professionals; but no channel yielded a satisfactory result and we decided to scrap the Android Program.
Even though we were able to create a great user experience and features that users loved, we failed to create a sustainable business case out of it – crucial for any Minimum Viable Product to live and succeed.
So, here are a few learnings that we have had, and would like to pass on to product managers or CEO’s of startups or any organisation trying to create and build a product. Hopefully, they can derive some value out of these as mistakes to avoid:
Learning #1: While validating your idea, make sure you understand the difference between ‘I am willing to enroll and pay for the service now’ vs ‘I will surely enroll and pay for it, in the future’
Learning #2: While qualitative analysis is important, you must perform a quantitative analysis as well for validating hypotheses and building a business case.
Learning #3: You do not need the final product to be ready for testing a particular customer acquisition channel.
Learning #4: If you are thinking of using online marketing channels for customer acquisition, you need to know that Cost Per Lead is highly affected by your brand awareness and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) presence.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How do the things you searched for appear the next time you open an application?

This entire process moves on a recommendation system. Machine learning is commonly used for this whereby the last few things one searches or orders are stored in history which later is used to suggest similar things. The recommendation system depends upon the app developers’ business as well as the product. Algorithms based on similarity and content filters are used to filter out the recommendations to be displayed on the app or other placeholders. Manifesting products which are frequently clubbed together to buy or complementary products is also a means to sell more through a recommendation system. The hybrid approach works on filtering the content both in terms of item and user. It suggests the products which are compared together at the time of purchase.

2. What future will online applications have?

Technology changes and also brings about changes at a meteoric pace. The future of Android app development will be greatly affected by the 5G technology with increased bandwidth and speed and low latency. The tap or click technology of cellphones offering more handiness will have a severe impact on the usage of websites which has already plummeted. Personalisation of applications with the help of Artificial Intelligence will raise the benchmarks for such developments. Instant apps which run without downloading will become the new normal in future.

3. What do companies look for in android app developers?

Apart from knowledge of the technicality of the development process of an application, an android developer should be well versed in the ongoing developments in this field. Only emphasizing on UI heavy apps, won't do any good. Companies expect the role of developers to be diversified. They believe that developers should take equal participation in the application testing and work together with the Quality Assurance Team, so knowledge in these additional fields will provide an edge to the developer over others.

Did you find this article helpful?

Shreya Kothari

Shreya is a Program Manager at UpGrad. She is a startup enthusiast and loves building things from scratch.

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Upgrad Talks intends to fill this gap by bringing together thought-leaders from different walks of life and raising the level of discourse in this area, as they share their experiences. Here are the top reasons why you must visit talks.upgrad.com today and make it your daily source of insights and motivation: Get Inspired Inspiration can come from many different sources. You may get inspired when you see a problem that needs a solution, which you are able to ideate, or get inspired when you hear stories of adversity being overcome by sheer willpower. Rarely does the simple existence of wealth inspire us. It may motivate us to work harder, but inspiration stems from a deeper place that needs real stories. Upgrad Talks are stories from the folks who have lived these stories, first hand. Not only does hearing someone’s complete story of challenges, thought process and subsequent outcome inspire, it also gives birth to new ideas and provides impetus to grow in your own space. Moreover, inspiration also stems from well-put statements such as, ‘attitude will sail you through,’ by Harit Nagpal, CEO of Tata Sky. A key benefit of listening to industry leaders is that it also inspires us to think. ‘What we think, we become,’ is a quote by Buddha that sums up this well. Go ahead, face challenges It does not matter if you are a startup or an established financial organization; challenges, big or small, exist in every level of most businesses. Challenges faced, strategized and overcome is the rite of passage for almost everyone. Not only do Upgrad Talks cover challenges faced by leading industry veterans, it also covers it from various stages of businesses along with discussion of the solutions that helped overcome them. Upgrad Talks speakers’ discuss challenges faced by businesses in different spaces, which makes these talks an interesting listen. Furthermore, is quite motivating to hear the candid conversations of business leaders. So what is the common thought on challenges in the Upgrad Talks? No challenge is too big. It also strengthens the belief that challenges help you grow and become stronger and develops a sense of confidence to take on the next big challenge. Learn from influencers People who can motivate are great influencers. To hear success stories at Upgrad Talks, which have been driven by deep-rooted passion as well as courage of conviction can be a great influence on most people. It is likely to help you push yourself to greater heights and also follow your dreams a bit more diligently. To quote Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl, ‘ there is a fine line between stubbornness and persistence.’ Upgrad Talks is likely to help you define the lines as an excellent selection of influencers talk also about the key soft skills required to make it a significant mark on the industry that you belong to. Mentoring As you listen to entrepreneurs, business leaders and experts on models that have worked, one can also start drawing parallels to one’s one business or profession. Mentoring of this kind is both subtle and effective as it helps you choose some key takeaways from the shared experiences that are most relevant to you. Follow the series to get premium access to the best mentors in the country as they talk about education, the emerging digital age and its impact on businesses, talent shortages and advice to youngsters. A bit of crystal gazing In the series of Upgrad Talks, one is likely to come across a vast amount of business knowledge which has been converted into digestible insights that can also help you choose the next steps in your career. Speakers’ at Upgrad Talks share their business mantras and what the future is likely to be. This is crystal gazing of the finest variety and yet another reason to tune into the talks. A healthy dash of optimism One of the unique selling points of the Upgrad Talks is that they also brings out the combined optimism in business from key industry leaders. Apart from that one can learn what is next in the industry, and explore potential future opportunities in the workspace. The upbeat and positive nature of these talks makes them a must-listen. Easily available online Just in case you were wondering how far you would need to travel to listen to such a wide range of speakers, you can breath easy. Upgrad Talks are delivered online and you can listen to them at your own convenience. All you need to do is to long onto talks.upgrad.com and you can access high quality, pre-recorded sessions online. Upgrad is making content richer, bigger and better as it kicks off with 15+ talks delivered by entrepreneurs, experts & business leaders. You definitely do not want to miss out on the educational transformation that UpGrad is fuelling in partnership with some of the greatest minds. Remember, one can never stop learning. So, if you always aspired to hear great advice and insights from the top Indian business leaders on how you can grow your business, choose a career goal or get inspired, do take a look at Upgrad Talks. They are truly the voices that impact. Join us today and be a part of it at talks.upgrad.com.

by Omkar Pradhan

06 Aug'16

5.37K+

Evolving online education: Learning Together

Technologies in online learning have been making promises since early 20th century. From radio to present day MOOCs, multiple new technologies were seen as silver bullet in revolutionising education. These promises were indeed laudable, to make education accessible to everyone, affordable for everyone and more effective. Yet, the same history of unmet expectations has been repeated every time*. Although a lot has happened over the past decade in terms of growth and expansion of online education, there are many challenges yet to be solved before we can say online learning has truly arrived. We, at UpGrad, believe the following three challenges are the biggest hurdles to the success of online education. Isolation: Online learning is solitary experience Acceptability: Online learning’s validity in the Job Market Not Engaging: Interplay of distractions and motivations in learning online The dismally low completion rates and high failure rates are reflection of these challenges [1]. Our goal at UpGrad is to fight these challenges and provide an unmatched learning experience for the working professionals. We believe, with the flexibility of online learning, every working professional can “UpGrade” himself without going back to full-time formal education. Hence, we need to to make online learning mainstream. In this article we would be sharing how are setting the online learning as a ‘Social Experience’ for our students, ie the first of the three mentioned challenges. In 2000s, internet surfing was mainly an individual experience and on the other hand, in 2016 almost all of internet time is a social experience. We do not feel alone in 2016 version of internet. We believe online education will have much higher engagement and completion rates once it becomes a social experience. An average student’s e-learning journey is an individual experience making him/her feel isolated. Learners move through the course with limited interactions with both their instructor and classmates. We at UpGrad, are building a new learning platform specifically designed keeping our students and their needs in mind. We believe this would be key to provide the kind of engagement levels the students deserve. The perception of social presence (or lack of) is a big concern among students and teachers in online learning. Teachers develop courses in isolation and the students take the courses in isolation. Researchers have found strong correlation between the sense of social presence facilitated by the course and student’s perceived learning [3,4,5]. Also there is good re correlation between withdrawal in the course and student’s perceived lack of social interaction and instructor presence [3]. Lack of social interaction in e-learning increases the distraction, since a learner would look for social interaction elsewhere which is usually Twitter, Whatsapp or Facebook. If there is another learner doing the same course in my apartment building, there are limited chances that I would know about him. As learners of online courses, we are oblivious of everyone else’s presence except few replies on the discussion forum. They do form Facebook groups or Whatsapp groups organically, yet the whole online learning format ends up being mostly a solo experience. Here are the steps we are taking at UpGrad in making our online programs a social experience.: Profiles : The first step in ‘social’ e-learning is knowing your classmates. We have learner profiles with education and work history along with other details. Almost everyone is encouraged to fill in their full profile along with a descriptive ‘bio’ section. There are multiple points where learners are nudged to click on the profiles. To improve discoverability of relevant profiles we not only leverage cohort social graph but also use interest graph, performance graph, complementary skills graphs. Combined with other semi random** algorithms like who was recently online, learners bump into each other in interesting ways. In the first month of Data Analytics Program, an average engaged learner viewed peer profiles 110 times. Discussions: We have a discussion forum which is contextual and relevant to the course content. We designed it from the ground up to involve learners during the course. They help each other, solve doubts, ask questions, have healthy debates on the forum. Only when there is no consensus a Teaching Assistant gets involved in clearing the doubts. Last 3 months data shows that on a daily basis 50% of the students who are engaged on the platform, also engaged actively on the discussion forum. As most professionals have different backgrounds, sharing of experiences on the forum is much valuable to everyone in the cohort. We have seen learners fall into three buckets on the forum. First is the majority producers, the top 30% of forum content producers are responsible for around 70% of the discussions. The next 50% do the rest of 30% of the content but continue to voice their opinions through upvotes. Rest of the 20% are mere observers. These numbers are highly encouraging and we will be investing more time in finding out how student-student social interactions can help in overall engagement. Figure 1: Forum topic distribution in one of our programs. Share in the pie is (questions * votes) for each topic. Bigger share of the pie is a proxy for doubts. This lead us to start live sessions on those topics. Thought Leader AMAs: Initiating and maintaining engagement on the forum is hard. To set the ball rolling, we started the discussion forum for a new cohort with getting a thought leader to do an AMA on the platform. This way not only the students got a product onboarding experience but also the social expectation was set amongst the peers. In some months, the total content creation during AMAs ended up around 20% of the total cumulative content. We also observed a side benefit of starting the program with thought leader – that learners are more helpful, behave with more civility and show much more respect for each other. This is not very unusual because it is known that a group’s eventual social dynamics are very much impacted by behaviour in initial few days. In a way, it sets the trend which follows upto the end of the course. We also explored bringing in external motivations to see how does it impact on engagement levels. At times, there were small gifts for top forum contributors and at times we included forum participation in the grading. Our primary observations show that this is to be used cautiously. We are working on establishing a balance between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for social involvement. Facebook Groups: For all cohorts we have Facebook groups for students apart from the platform discussion forum. We were not very confident how much our forum will be used for non academic discussions and generic social sharing. However, we found more and more discussions of generic nature and sharing of articles & blogs also started happening on the forum. Hence facebook group ended up becoming redundant. We are thinking of doing away with a cohort’s facebook group with this expanded use of discussion forum In summary, having a strong sense of community within the students is a big predictor of learning outcomes. This has been researched multiple times [7, 8]. Our platform’s usage data of course progress and social interaction activity strongly confirms this research. At a time, a learner who is socially engaged on our platform has usually completed 4 times (Figure 2) course materials than a learner who does not participate in social discussions. This high correlation has been repeated across multiple cohorts. Figure 2: At a snapshot of time course completion rates for learners active on forum vs non active. Apart from the student isolation e-learning content creators and facilitators tend to work in isolation, reflecting and sharing of best practices is minimal[6]. We at UpGrad are aware of this problem, and making sure different program teams collaborate and share solutions to common problems. We do not have complete solution to isolation in learning yet. We as a company are focussed on solving this problem, we are testing out few ideas and are willing to share the results with the community. With these changes we are expecting online learning experience to be more engaging, more involving and eventually pushing up the low completion rates of online learning. These are early days of online education and we have miles to go. Bibliography [1] http://collegequarterly.ca/2007-vol10-num03-summer/rolfe.html [2] Online Social Networks as Formal Learning Environments: Learner Experiences and Activities, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, Vol 13, No 1 (2012) [3] Tello SF (2007). An analysis of student persistence in online education. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education [4] Herbert, M. (2006). Staying the course: A study in online student satisfaction and retention. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 9(4). [5] Morris, T. A. (2009). Anytime/anywhere online learning: Does it remove barriers for adult learners. In T.Kidd (Ed.), Online education and adult learning: New frontiers for teaching practices. Hershey, PA:IGI Global. [6] Duncan, H & Barnett J (2009) Learning to teach online. [7] Kaulback, B (2015). Learning Together : Community and Network from the perspective of designers of online learning. (Doctoral dissertation) [8] Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Borokhovski, E., Wade, C. A., Tamim, R. M., Surkes, M. A., & Bethel, E. C. (2009). A meta-analysis of three types of interaction treatments in distance education. Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1243–1289.

by Ankit Mittal

08 Aug'16

898.95K+

Skill deprivation: Education alone won’t guarantee a job, in-demand skills need of hour

If you are 25 years old, hold a degree in a traditional arts discipline from a well-regarded institute and are looking for a job, you may not be handed one on a platter any time soon. You may be cushioned within the famous Indian demographic that is supposed to yield a ‘dividend,’ but unlike what you’ve been reading everywhere, this does not guarantee you employment. Between 1980 to 2010, 90% of world labour force growth occurred in developing countries and about 500 million new workers emerged in India and China alone (workers went from 260 million to 470 million in India, between this period). India is all set to power most of global growth in labour in the coming years. Enrolment in Indian higher education is 24% right now. With India attaining almost universal elementary education, and increased retention in secondary schools, the projected demand for higher education and jobs will only escalate. India has finally been placed on the world map with a solid advantage where labour supply is concerned. Impacting Education: My Journey and UpGrad It’s not all good news though. Indian millennials are being touted as the future of jobs and the saviours of the working world. But this won’t hold true if in-demand skills are not imparted to the youth entering the workforce. The world of work is changing and industries are transforming. It’s a fact that we are moving towards a massive labour pool, but we are possibly riding a low-skill, low-wage cycle to get there. The country is on a trajectory that involves a surplus of millions of low-skill workers, whereas most nations, including India, will be demanding high-skill workers more and more. Most industries are replacing low-skill jobs with high-skill ones. Skills relating to upcoming technologies in advanced areas – think AI, robotics, data science and mining – are gaining immense relevance. Unfortunately, our education system is not preparing students well enough to enter the workforce as high-skill workers nor equipping them with skills in emerging domains. Curricula is outdated and pedagogy poorly-developed. Gone are the days when just holding a graduate degree was enough to get employers to clamour to hire you. Education is not enough. The new-age job-seeker must strive to acquire specific skill sets to be considered employable (currently only 43% of Indian youth are considered fully employable). This applies to all sectors of the economy, as most industries and businesses are adopting new-age technologies and going digital within most functions. There’ll Be A Billion-Plus Job-Seekers By 2050! The positive connotation associated with our demographic shift has been taken for granted and assigned the term ‘dividend.’ But if we don’t strategically harness this change, we could easily be faced with a demographic disaster. We don’t want to be stuck in a situation where we have too many job-seekers with inadequate skills, and therefore not enough jobs for them. India is moving workers out of farm jobs at a very fast rate, and this will only add to the burden of providing jobs in other sectors. Realising this, even the government has begun focusing on skill development and training. Creating an entirely new Ministry and launching the Skill India Mission are clear indications of this. Another sign that skill training is gaining momentum is reflected in the growth of the Indian education and skills industry at an average rate of 13% over four years. From Rs 1.21 trillion in 2008 to Rs 2.35 trillion in 2012. However, these measures have not been enough to successfully skill India’s young. Only 2% of the Indian workforce has received some kind of formal skills training so far, and 8% have received informal training. Comparatively, 47% of China’s workforce is skill trained, 52% in USA, 68% in UK, 75% in Germany, 80% in Japan and 96% in South Korea. Almost half of Indian employers find it difficult to fill jobs and a similar proportion of employed youth suffer from some degree of skill deprivation. By 2050, India will be home to more than a billion jobseekers. This means providing jobs for over 12 million new entrants annually. There is also the challenge of finding jobs for the backlog, which reached 60 million by 2014. The pace of accretion to the labour market will keep increasing, given our demographic profile and declining age-dependency ratio. Our working age population (15-64 years) will peak in 2050 and till then pressures for jobs will only become worse. We need a wake-up call and more concerted efforts towards large-scale skill development and training. We may have a situation of too few high-skill workers and not enough jobs for medium or low-skill workers. This needs to be rectified by adjusting the education and skilling system to ready ourselves for the jobs of tomorrow. Article Source: http://www.firstpost.com/business/skill-deprivation-education-alone-wont-guarantee-a-job-in-demand-skills-need-of-hour-3020568.html

by Apoorva Shankar

08 Nov'16

5.13K+

Why The Growth Of Higher Education In India Hinges On The Private Sector

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that the public sector’s role in education can be identified as a three-fold one. Firstly, it is tasked with universalizing access to education. Its next responsibility would be to regulate the sector and finally, to ensure quality education for all. In the context of the access provider role, estimates show that just in terms of physical infrastructure, more than a US $100 billion spends would be required in higher education alone, to double enrollment, from where it stands today (24%). Where regulation is concerned, bodies such as the University Grants Commission (UGC) and other higher education regulators are in-charge but leave much to be desired in terms of quality checks and monitoring, accreditation, etc. In fact, the UGC merely acts as a grants disbursing body now for universities and colleges, rather than a regulator. This is despite the fact that about 16% of the Ministry’s budget (2016-17) was allocated to UGC. Regarding quality, the government struggles to set standards and measure outcomes. Accreditation in the country is irregular and sub-optimal. In addition, unlike school education, where a certain level of learning outcomes may be gauged, this is difficult to do in higher education – especially assessing employability of a student post completing such education. So is there a role the government should prioritise? Further, because the government is entrusted with these roles, does it necessarily mean that they are its exclusive mandate? Or should the government act as an enabler and allow external participation if it means better execution and a higher success rate? The education and training industry is extremely large today and has strong further growth potential. With total educational spending of $2.7 trillion, the industry accounted for about 4.25% of the world’s GDP in 2010. In India alone, the spending on education and skilling has touched approximately Rs 74,000 crore. This may seem like a daunting figure but is still not sufficient. India spends about 4% of its GDP on all of education (about 1% on higher education), whereas globally the minimum recommended expenditure on education is 6% of GDP. Most of the public expenditure on higher education is used upon salaries and maintaining existing institutions, leaving very little to be spent on curriculum, research, and technology. However, spending on education still has enormous scaling to do and this is where the private sector comes in. Private players will have opportunities from rising demand in segments not well covered by the public education system (like adult education and vocational training). They bring in additional capital and are able to make huge investments, especially when government spending is insufficient and results in substantial infrastructure and investment deficit. For instance, the government had set a target of achieving a 30% enrolment ratio in higher education by 2020. The enrolment ratio currently is 24%. Judging by historical trends, and the current pace of rising enrolments, this target seems difficult to achieve. We may need a better, plan to succeed. Plus, the demand for higher education is only set to accelerate with growing population, higher enrolment as well as retention of students in schools. The private sector could play a crucial role in plugging these gaps and matching demand. In fact, it is already capturing the market in a big way, as can be seen in the adjacent graph. Enrolment in, and share of, private higher education institutions has surpassed that of government institutions (data as on 2013). Even the online education market in India expected to grow to US $40 billion by as soon as 2017. Unlike the education sector, which is legally mandated to operate on a not-for-profit basis, for-profit skill training institutes can be set up. This, coupled with initiatives of the National Skill Development Corporation, has encouraged the private sector to set up vocational training institutes. Corporate interest has also increased in the skill development space because of the benefits that accrue to businesses themselves, in the form of adequately trained manpower as a ready pool for future hiring. Majority of institutions offering professional disciplines are now in the private sector. There is a tendency of the public sector to view the private sector’s involvement in the education space with scepticism. But the private sector is necessary because of its ability to match industry demand for superior skilled manpower. It supplements infrastructure, facilities, technology and pedagogy and has an added advantage of escaping bureaucratic control and retaining autonomy to a large extent. Private players often collaborate with reputed international universities for faculty and other benefits which can be attractive to prospective students. They are also heavily investing in research-based education. As consumers of skilled manpower as well, the private sector is in a position to understand what type of skill training is to be imparted, and eventually benefit from it. This makes skill-training more efficient and effective. All three education-related roles of the government are equally important. However, while regulation should remain outside the purview of the private sector, nothing should stop them from assisting the public sector in maximising enrolments and improving quality of education. Public needs to work with private and create a level-playing field, in order to uplift the overall quality of education. Article Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/mayank-kumar/why-the-growth-of-higher-education-in-india-hinges-on-the-privat/

by Apoorva Shankar

08 Nov'16