Skill India’s Empty Promises: Certificates Over Careers

India’s much-vaunted Skill India mission promised to turn the youth workforce into “trained professionals” ready for jobs. Instead, critics say, it has largely turned young people into certificate-holders with no real employment to show for it. A chorus of students, trainers and industry experts paint a grim picture where short-term courses, hasty certifications, and misplaced incentives have filled training centers, but not factory floors or offices. Nearly half of graduates remain unemployable, and even vocationally trained youth struggle to find work. As one Congress manifesto points out, 7/10 educated young people under 25 say they can’t get a job and feel hopeless. In short, India’s workforce has skills on paper but not in practice.

Why Skill India and similar schemes have spawned certificates rather than jobs, and why Indian degrees often fail to impart job-ready skills?

The Certificates Factory: Training Without Employment

The data are stark. The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), India’s flagship skill-training program trained 13.7 million candidates between 2015 and 2022. Yet only about 18% of them (roughly 2.4 million) were reported placed in jobs. In other words, for every 5 youth who earned a PMKVY certificate, only one secured employment. Subsequent versions of PMKVY saw even worse outcomes. Reported placement rates plunged under PMKVY 3.0. Official records suggest only 10–12% of certified trainees got jobs under the latest PMKVY phase.

This yawning gap between training and work is no accident. Investigations find that many courses are extremely short and superficial. Instead of months or years of apprenticeship, trainees often get only a few weeks of classroom drills. Data from the Ministry itself reveal a trend toward “short-term trainings”; some lasting just 10 days or even a single week. Meanwhile, the placement claims of these programs may be inflated. For example, PMKVY publicly touted a 54% placement rate, but government dashboard data showed only about 22% of certified trainees actually found jobs.

So, what does this mean in practice? It means millions of youth collect skill certificates that impress no employer. India’s vocational education system has become a numbers game, where certificates are churned out without meaningful skill acquisition. Indeed, trainees often emerge unqualified for real work. Anil Kumar, 44, completed a 10-month “AC technician” course through Skill India in 2021. Yet he reports: “Only 1/2 persons from my batch began getting work on a regular basis; remaining were left empty-handed. Kaushal Vikas (skill development) is only in name, there aren’t real jobs.” Anil still volunteers at a local NGO because he could not find work in the trade he trained for.

The neglect of jobs is part of a larger “supply-driven” approach. Schemes push fixed targets of graduates rather than responding to what employers need. Research economist Santosh Mehrotra explains “PMKVY is a supply-driven program and that’s the foundational problem. Employers articulate their needs, but the system is pushing out certified workers irrespective of demand.” The Government’s skill budgets and targets, billions spent to certify millions haven’t translated into better employment statistics. As of 2023-24, less than 3% of India’s 530 million-strong workforce had any formal vocational training. In contrast, countries like Japan and Korea formally train over 80–95% of their workforce. The mismatch shows India’s skilling machines mostly print paper, not productive power.

Voices from the Ground: Students and Trainers Speak Out

The tragedy of certificate-centred skilling is best illustrated by those living it. Across India, students who completed skill courses say they were left with nothing to show. Consider Payal Ratan, a 32-year-old from Varanasi. In 2022 she joined a PMKVY tailoring course, paying a small fee with hopes of starting a sewing business.

But “the course came to an abrupt halt in just two months” when the center suddenly shut down. Payal was “disappointed with her experience”; despite learning basic stitching, she ended up “sitting at home”. She never even received her promised certificate, and with no formal credential or job, “we had to file a complaint”, she recalls, though others were afraid to push.

Millions share Payal’s frustration. Ranjana Devi, 33, studied beautician skills in Delhi in 2021, “the best student” of her batch, but three years on “she remained jobless”. Even training to open her own salon failed. “A poor footfall of customers meant she had to shut shop”. Another trainee, Sumit Kumar (27), enrolled for a year-long computer operator course in Delhi, only to be rejected by employers repeatedly. “Right now, I am working at a computer teaching centre… I keep getting rejected,” he laments. He feels “hopeless and demoralised”, echoing a finding by the Congress manifesto that “seven out of ten educated young people under age 25… don’t get a job”*.

These stories aren’t limited to Delhi or one sector. In Varanasi, dozens of trade trainees report identical woes: courses cut short, low wages, or no placement support. Anil Kumar’s air-conditioner repair course, run by Samsung Technical Institute, was meant to last 10 months but only ran 4.

Of his cohort, only “one or two persons began getting work on a regular basis; remaining were left empty-handed”, he says. Like Payal, he views “Kaushal Vikas (skill development)… only in name”, concluding “there aren’t real jobs”. In Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh, dozens of mechanics and sales trainees report similarly meager outcomes, even as one trainer confesses “we were arranging companies ourselves; it was not the government that sent them”, and often barely minimum wages were paid.

On the other side of the blackboard, vocational trainers and center operators struggle under the system’s constraints. Shikha Singh has run a government skill center in Delhi for over a decade, up-skilling thousands. But even she grudgingly admits the flaws: “Finding a good teacher at a minimum wage… and managing everything within the budget… is a tough ask”. With barely Rs. 6,000 allocated per student, centers can’t afford advanced equipment or expert instructors. Shikha says she limits her courses to what can be taught cheaply, leaving out many “big” trades. Infrastructure is often lacking: in one Delhi center a teacher reported the fund-starved management simply shut the doors without notice.

Many centers run on shoestrings. Kulvinder Kaur, who operates a dozen PMKVY centers in Delhi, notes that by design they only get paid after a student completes (and passes) a course. If someone drops out two days before the end, the center loses its entire payment, which is an unsustainable model that prompted dozens of private centers to close.

As an MSDE official puts it, “Strict monitoring of attendance has led to students dropping out”, because students resist the heavy bureaucracy imposed. On top of it, trainer salaries are low and often delayed. Shikha and others mention instances where trainers went unpaid during COVID disruptions, or where instructors quit because they could earn more as regular electricians or tailors than as trainers.

In sum, the voices of trainers and trainees reveal a consistent theme: “we were told we’d get a job or certificate; in reality we got neither.” From cities to villages, thousands echo Ranjana Devi’s disappointment: “I should have gotten a job after this course,” she says — yet years later, she’s still out of work.

Industry Speaks: “Graduates Lack Job-Ready Skills”

Indian employers say the problem starts much earlier: degrees often don’t equip students with practical skills. A recent Times of India report found that companies actively recruiting freshers complain of critical skill gaps in graduates. This is true across industries. From IT to manufacturing, tech companies lament that even top-college pass-outs lack hands-on experience in AI, data analytics or soft skills. Indeed, a national job portal’s survey reports 38% of employers cite a “severe skills gap” as their primary hiring challenge. “Theory-based exams have given way to a fresh reality. Our youth need practical skills, not just degrees,” observes Indeed India’s Sashi Kumar. “As companies build future-ready teams, there’s a clear need to bridge the skills gap”.

Manufacturers echo the cry. A June 2025 Cushman & Wakefield survey of small factories found 71% had received no benefit from government skill programs. Overall 61% of MSMEs reported no support from skill schemes at all. These entrepreneurs note that while infrastructure projects get attention, “skill shortages, especially in MSMEs, persist”. The Indian IT industry has similarly flagged the “employability gap” among engineering grads. Only about 45% of engineering graduates are ready for jobs according to NASSCOM (quoting a 2022 report). Companies say they end up training hires from scratch or hiring multiple candidates for one vacancy, because even degree-holders lack crucial vocational skills.

In short, industries that do hire are often disappointed. India’s famous “degree mania” produces oversupply of unskilled candidates. One HR manager noted, “even at IITs and IIMs, many students are not job-ready; academic credentials shine, but practical skills don’t”. Indeed, Business Today once reported an employability survey finding a shocking 80% of Indian engineering graduates are not fit for knowledge-economy jobs. Only 2–3% even have the cutting-edge tech skills (e.g. AI, coding) that industry needs.

Thus industry voices frame the problem this way. India’s education system and vocational schemes are not producing “what employers want”. As Quess Corp’s workforce president Lohit Bhatia puts it, “the true metric of success is actual job opportunities post-skilling”. Too often, the metric in Delhi has been numbers certified, not numbers employed. The result is, factories run short of capable workers, and graduates pile up in job centers.

Systemic Flaws: Short Courses and Shoddy Training

Why has the Skill India machinery failed? Experts point to several deep problems, which include a rush to inflate numbers, weak quality control, and a disconnect from industry.

Chasing Numbers, Not Skills

Under pressure to show results, many schemes boast huge training figures with little substance behind them. The original 2015 National Skill Policy set a goal of training 400 million workers by 2022. That has since quietly vanished as unreachable. Instead, the focus has shifted to enrolling as many trainees as possible, often through one-day orientations or quick certifications. Government reports reveal a dramatic rise in Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) courses. These certify workers with informal skills after as little as 10 hours of instruction. In one 2023 survey, formal vocational training rose from 2.4% to 4.1% of the workforce over 20 years, but much of the jump came from brief courses and RPL schemes, not long-term learning.

This “quantity over quality” approach breeds perverse outcomes. Training centers advertise colourful short-term courses (stitching, mobile repair, solar installation, etc.), yet fill seats with minimal equipment. An IDR analysis warned that 1000s of crores are spent each year, but data on placements is scarce. When placement numbers are published, they often seem inflated or suspicious. For example, the official site once claimed over half of PMKVY trainees got jobs, but a closer look showed only 22% did. Research by analysts and parliamentary committees repeatedly flags that reported “placement rates” do not match on-the-ground reality.

Dismal Curriculum and Training Quality

Even for the students who do attend full courses, the content is often outdated or incomplete. Training modules can lack rigor or relevance. Amit Basole of Azim Premji University notes bluntly that “Skill centres are not adequately equipped for practical training. A lot of training ends up being theoretical, with little practical component”. Many institutes rush through programming on paper without hands-on labs, or teach “cybersecurity” using dated examples rather than current threats. On-the-job training is rare. Germany’s famously high apprenticeship rates (6 million apprentices out of 46 million workers) contrast sharply with India’s 500,000 apprentices among 570 million workers.

Poor teacher quality compounds the problem. The MSDE itself has documented a shortage of qualified trainers and “scarce training capacity” in many ministries’ programs. Trainers are often hired on contract at low pay, and may lack industry experience. As one Delhi center owner puts it, “Finding a good teacher at a minimum wage is a tough ask”. Many trainees drop out when they find the course is just sitting in classrooms with no project work. A Parliamentary panel found that up to 20% of enrolled trainees drop out due to family obligations, lack of interest, or perceived uselessness.

Short courses aggravate the quality issue. A 2017-18 unit-level analysis showed that 37% of all vocational trainees did courses under six months, up from 22% before. Nearly 43% of Skill India placements came from “short-term training” programs (mostly less than 3 months). But people who learn something in 10 days can’t match those trained for years. Consequently, the unemployment rate among formally trained youth remains stubbornly 17%, far higher than the 4% unemployment of informally trained workers. In other words, even after a certificate, many newcomers still cannot find jobs.

Governance Gaps and Fund Misuse

Coordination failures also undermine skilling. Unlike school or college education, skill programs are scattered across many ministries and agencies. A India Today report notes 20+ ministries run separate skilling schemes, with poor coordination. A government review in 2016 found ministries short of both funds and qualified staff, leading to substandard training. Paramilitary forces, tourism, health, each have their own training targets, often disconnected from local industry needs.

Funds have not always been well spent. IndiaSpend’s analysis shows that “Only 56% of PMKVY funds were utilised in 2016-17; even in later years many rupees went unspent”. Some centres have been accused of fudging attendance to claim grants. In one Delhi hospital of sorts, managers reported “diversion of funds” for non-training purposes, prompting stricter monitoring. Yet overly draconian rules can backfire such as mandatory biometric attendance, while curbing fraud, also caused mass dropouts as students balked at fingerprint checks and rigid timetables.

Ultimately, the centralised top-down design has ignored the reality on the ground. Many observers argue that successful vocational systems worldwide are demand-driven, shaped by employers, whereas India’s is supply-driven by bureaucratic targets. Ex-NSDC CEO Manish Kumar tried to insist loans to training companies would ensure quality, but most such companies have defaulted on loans. Now India’s spending on skill training is sometimes criticized as wasteful. As one analysis notes, “every year, 4000-5000 crore rupees are spent, but hardly any data exists on actual job placements”. The simplest measure of success, a skilled person getting a job, is rarely tracked.

Uneven Progress: States and Sectors

The impact of Skill India has not been uniform across the country. Some states and industries have adapted better, but many have lagged. A few patterns emerge:

• Telecom and IT Training: States with strong IT infrastructure (Telangana, Karnataka) saw marginally better outcomes. For example, IndiaSpend found Telangana’s PMKVY centers placed about 35% of trainees, well above the national average. By contrast, Maharashtra (with fewer rural programs) placed only ~9%. This suggests states that aligned skilling centers with local industry demand (e.g. Hyderabad’s tech sector) did somewhat better.
• Rural vs Urban: Programs like DDU-GKY (rural job training) aimed to help village youth. These had mixed success, often hampered by low local industry involvement. As industry data shows, MSMEs in smaller cities report little benefit from central schemes. States with large informal sectors (e.g. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh) struggled to provide real jobs to graduates. For instance, in UP the total candidates trained collapsed by 89% between 2020 and 2022 as momentum stalled. Delhi and Kerala, despite high spending on education, had low placement rates (10–11%), reflecting insufficient industrial absorption.
• Agricultural vs Industrial Regions: In primarily agricultural states, many skill programs risked overshooting actual job openings. The IndiaSpend report notes that states like Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh trained the most people but often in trades unrelated to local economies. It’s telling that Lakshadweep trained only 270 youth and placed none, a sign that small, remote regions have almost no viable job market even with training.
• Private Sector Engagement: Across all regions, private industry was largely absent from driving skilling. Even where training centers were set up, many companies refused to take apprentices. India’s long-term plan envisioned 50 lakh apprentices by 2020, but only 20 lakh were trained by 2022. Most placements were in government-owned firms. Without a strong apprenticeship push in manufacturing (unlike in Germany), the manufacturing sector remains unskilled. A report found that “most Indian small manufacturers aren’t benefiting from government skill-training programs”. This has policy implications. Without tying skilling to real jobs in local industries, new certificates land in bureaucratic limbo.

Overall, the story across states is the same. Good intentions, poor execution. The States’ own Skill Missions often lack resources or clear strategy. A 2024 World Bank review found skill boards at the state level were underfunded and poorly monitored. Some bright spots exist. For instance, Gujarat’s skill corporation (SSG) has been touted for industry collaboration, but even there growth was slower than promised. The recently released State Skill Index 2024 hints that southern and western states (Telangana, Karnataka, Gujarat) score higher on skilling outcomes than many in the north and east.

But even in the “best” states, national unemployment has spiked among educated youth. An ILO study cited by ThePrint notes that the share of youths with secondary or higher education in India’s unemployed has more than doubled from 35% in 2000 to 66% in 2022. In other words, having a diploma is no shield against joblessness. Whether in Punjab or in Pondicherry, the phenomenon of skilled school-leavers burning through courses and coming out empty remains widespread.

Degrees Unfit for Reality: The Educational Paradox

The failures of Skill India are intimately connected to a broader Indian paradox. Academic degrees seldom guarantee employability. Over the past decade, India has seen a proliferating higher education system, but the Quality has not kept pace. A 2023 Economic Survey highlighted that 48.75% of graduates are unemployable, meaning only 51.25% can be hired for jobs. That’s roughly one in two out of college not job-ready, and this figure was up from a mere 34% ten years ago. Engineers and managers fare particularly poorly. One study found only 1/5 engineers and 1/4 MBAs are employable.

This discrepancy is felt in every industry. As companies repeatedly note, “a degree matters more than skills” but then those same degree-holders fall short on technical knowledge. A landmark Aspiring Minds survey in 2019 starkly declared 80% of Indian engineering graduates unfit for any job in the knowledge economy. Only about 3% could code well, compared to nearly 19% in the US. Internships and project work are rare. Barely 40% of engineering students do internships beyond course requirements. In short, India is turning out legions of degree-bearing students who’ve spent years memorizing theory, only to reach the hiring floor unprepared.

The mismatch is structural. Indian universities typically emphasize rote learning; curricula are slow to adapt to new fields. As an India Today report puts it, the educational system “often fails to equip students with necessary skills”. A policy expert bluntly observed that “today if you randomly ask 10 educated young people under age 25, 7 will tell you they don’t get a job and feel hopeless”. Echoing this, academic Goutam Das wrote that India’s schools and colleges are largely detached from vocational skills, churning out “graduates unfit to be hired”.

Concretely, this means the pool of degree-holders entering the job market is desperate for supplementary skills. The logic of Skill India was to fill that gap with vocational courses. But because the schemes themselves are flawed, graduates are adding one more certificate to their stack, rather than a useful competence. The combined effect is overqualification and under-skilling. The economy has 280 million new jobs needed for the 24 million annual entrants, yet only about half of incoming graduates can be placed, and many of those need additional training or settle for low-skilled work.

In informal terms, India now faces both “degree mania” and “skill poverty.” Degrees are devalued because so many lack real-world know-how. At the same time, young people remain deeply insecure. Having spent years (and often family savings) on college, they find themselves having to learn basics on the job or through pricey private courses. This is a recipe for mass disillusionment. The new generation looks at distant future: Will PMKVY 4.0 or a government internship scheme genuinely change this, or merely pile on more hollow qualifications?

A Way Forward? Rethinking Skills and Education

The upshot of this piece of draft is clear. Skill India’s certificate culture needs an urgent overhaul. Across India, training centers should not be islands unto themselves; they must partner tightly with industry. Successful models worldwide (Germany, Switzerland) put employers in the driver’s seat. Apprentices split time between classrooms and factories, ensuring every graduate is “industry-tested.” As Santosh Mehrotra argues, India must shift to “demand-driven” skilling, meaning companies define what training is needed and even bear some costs.

On the education side, universities and colleges should integrate vocational elements, internships and practical labs as a core part of degrees, not as an afterthought. The fact that 29.1% of graduates are unemployed (versus only 3.4% of non-graduates) shows that investing in degrees without skills is wasteful. We need curricula that teach real skills like coding by coding, market analysis by analysis. Soft skills (teamwork, communication, adaptability) are equally vital, as industry surveys emphasize.

At the very least, governments must stop counting paper certificates as success. Future skill programs should be measured on employment outcomes. How many trainees got sustainable jobs at living wages? States could pilot localized approaches. For example, Tamil Nadu’s Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) focus on local textile and auto clusters and have better outcomes. Kerala’s IT workforce does well in IT services due to state-led skilling, but other trades there languish. Sharing best practices could help.

Finally, transparency and feedback loops are critical. The NSDC and Ministries should publish clear placement data and outcomes by course and center, so failures can be identified. Civil society and media already shine a light on shady centers; systematic audits (as IndiaSpend and ThePrint have done) should guide reform. As one MSDE official put it, tracking every student is now digital, but the real test is whether those students get jobs.

In conclusion, Skill India’s legacy so far is underwhelming. It has generated millions of certificates, but far fewer careers. Degrees and diplomas across India remain detached from skills in demand. Students and employers alike want practical abilities, not just paper credentials. As the Skill India mission enters its second decade, its architects must pivot. The goal must be not “Kaushal Bharat” (skilled India) on paper, but a workforce that can actually work, otherwise certificates will continue to gather dust while the real potential of India’s youth remains locked away.