How to improve Indian Graduate employability and outcomes: Empirical comparisons with Australia

This chapter comparatively examines graduate employability issues in India and Australia. This chapter is based onquantitative and qualitative data collected in the surveys by the chapter authors;on four stakeholders (students, graduates, educators, employers) and their perceptions regarding strategies and other components of graduate employability. The chapter is organised into three sections. The first section identifies the key contextual factors impacting graduate employability in India and Australia. The second section presents and discusses the quantitative survey results, focussing on the discrepant perspectives of the various stakeholders and between India and Australia. The third section presents an analysis of the qualitative survey results from a solely Indian stakeholder perspective. Finally, the results are combined and interpreted to derive conclusions, policy implications and recommendations. This chapter is concluded with a survey comment written by one of the responding students in India. This student insightfully recognised that graduate employability is ashared responsibility, and can only be improved through the collaboration of three main stakeholders - students, universities and employers or national employment leaders. The five policy implications are posed to the Indian government through increased public funding: (i) the expansion of the capabilities and attributes of Indian graduates through promotion of practical knowledge and extracurricular student experiences; (ii) the promotion of research and training to the teachers and administrators of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs); (iii) the establishment of publicly funded quality controls and regulatory bodies for evaluating, assuring and improving consistency among private and publicly funded HEIs; (iv) the strengthening of internal quality reviews and improvement processes within HEIs; and (v) increasing employment opportunities for Indian graduates through developing internship initiatives and processing to enhance positive collaborative links between education and employment.