Why industry-driven, tailored courses are an alternative to bachelor’s degrees

As the worth of the time-tested bachelor’s degree becomes questionable, a bevy of newbies is luring students with new and attractive propositions

What do Bengaluru’s Scaler, Gurugram’s Master’s Union, Bengaluru’s Mesa, Kolkata’s Nexis and Mumbai’s IIDE (Indian Institute of Digital Education) have in common?

These new institutes are trying to grab the student early if he or she has a reasonable idea of which field they wish to pursue. (Representational image)

To begin with, all are “booster shots” or even alternative ways to spend one’s time after completing school (Class XII) instead of enrolling in a regular bachelor’s degree - which has been reduced in many instances to a worthless piece of paper - in one of the country’s myriad but mostly indifferent quality colleges.

Some Pros

Another commonality is that all these companies are exploiting the inability of Indian colleges, with their dated syllabuses, to keep up with the times. All of them offer an experience different from the usual fare dished out at legacy universities around India, be it teaching by industry professionals or internships in companies that are in sectors students intend to join, making those who graduate job-ready, industry-aligned and skill-focused.

Instead of waiting for students to get a taste of real life after their bachelor’s and during an MBA or another Master’s level programme, these new institutes are trying to grab the student early if he or she has a reasonable idea of which field they wish to pursue..

While traditional universities and colleges continue to lay strong academic foundations, today’s job market demands digital-first skills, adaptability, and a professional portfolio. Employers no longer seek just graduates but professionals who can hit the ground running from day one so that those who hire them are spared the trouble of training and teaching them the initial ropes. That’s where industry-driven UG programmes, offering a curriculum that integrates real-world exposure, industry mentorship, and applied learnings are coming in.

The inability of Indian colleges to keep their content relevant is being exploited eagerly by the new companies. These are options that make you work-ready at 21; at 18 and 19, the internships they will do will give them a taste of what is to come when they seek permanent employment.

All these courses encourage students to obtain an online degree on the premise that the traditional bachelor’s degree as we knew is dying and ask students to make better use of their time by attending offline classes on their campuses where the students will be exposed to “real life” problems and solutions, often delivered by the best in the business.

“The stamp of a bachelor’s can literally be acquired from anywhere. Options like we are offering will allow you to acquire that stamp regardless but gain a more all rounded education in digital marketing at our campus by interacting directly with future employers and industry stalwarts”, said IIDE’s Karan Shah, a recent entrant to this club. IIDE has an alumni base of 8000 through four shorter duration courses offered on its campus in Mumbai and has placed a majority of its students with companies that require deep digital skills like Kinnect, FoxyMoron, ToggleHead, WebShakers, Schbang, Socheers, Mumbai Foodie, Mindshift, White Rivers Media, BigMouth and Gozoop among others. Many of these companies spawned recently as social media begun to dominate the marketing landscape.

Also, often replacing the old, stodgy bespectacled professor who comes in and starts reading in monotones from his notes to deliver a lecture to somnolent students will be a young, nattily dressed and somewhat brash teacher - in the form of an entrepreneur of start-ups or CEO of a unicorn who have already made their millions by the time they touch 30. So, it will not be uncommon to visit one of the campuses of these newbies and find Binny Bansal or Bhavish Agarwal holding a session on app-based sales, digital sales or marketing techniques. In other words, your lecture might be directly delivered by your future employer.

Further, all are trying to be masters of one trade and not jack of all. So, while Scaler is focussed on computer science and artificial intelligence, IIDE is set to make a digital marketeer out of you, Master’s Union gets you deeper into the psychology of marketing while Mesa (Bengaluru) is in the business of nurturing future entrepreneurs. The school offers students at least three-four-month internships with real-life start up entrepreneurs during the course of the four-year programme, which will help them gain an insight into what they might need in case they choose to follow in their footsteps. In some cases, students are being promised opportunities for “global immersion” in Silicon Valley or closer home in Dubai.

Since all the new companies are small in scale - so far, the student intake is between 60 to 300 students a year - finding placements is not difficult as it is at the premier Indian institutions like IITs and even ISBs. In many cases, since the batch will be interacting and even interning at some of the new age companies and with their founders, many will be made entry-level offers through this process itself.

The premise is clear for the founders and CEOs: the student who has already picked his or her area of interest and gained some real work experience would be more work-ready than graduates from regular colleges.

“Traditionally, degrees were often paired with professional certifications like CA or CFA, seen as essential for climbing the corporate ladder. But as aspirations shift, particularly among younger generations drawn to entrepreneurship and the digital economy, the landscape is changing” said Shah, saying that a CA and CFA are being seen as “stodgy and has-been” options now.

He pointed out that today, job portals like Naukri.com are flooded with listings for roles in digital marketing (as high as 5x in comparison to jobs like CA and CFA), content creation, and product management - areas once considered niche. For students, these programmes translate into higher employability, hands-on experience, and fewer “fresher” rejections.

For institutions pioneering these programmes, this is a chance to carve out a permanent place in mainstream higher education without the red tape involved in setting up a college or university that has in place regulations required to bestow degrees. Higher education remains a fairly regulated sector, especially when it comes to conferring degrees.

Some Cons

Almost all the new institutes come with a hefty price tag, when compared with public universities. Even today, the fees at SRCC - the premier commerce and economics college in India - is just above ₹1 lakh for three years (non- residential). However, even with hostels, the public colleges rarely exceed ₹2 lakh per year.

The cost of studying at new certificate-based courses vary widely with the lowest available at around 7.5 lakh while the more expensive ones are equivalent to a degree from private colleges at ₹40 lakh for the duration of the course. So, affordability and whether these newbies are “value for money” becomes a big question. Since most of the offerings are still in the early stage, there is no precedent to go by. As a result, they remain uncharted territory. Unlike Delhi University or a number of state colleges, these don’t have a vast alumni network for graduates to tap into.

If the lack of an alumni base is a drawback, so is the threat of competition, especially from the online edtech firms. There are a number of players in the purely online space, some of which are established and have already mastered the placement game.

For instance, in the technology space, there are several established players charging lower fees and offering a range of pay-after-placement options. One online entrant in 2016, Masai School, offers students five courses including one in full stack development or coding, data analytics, automation and testing among others and has a zero upfront fee policy. Students take a test, are interviewed to assess their interest and drive and then admitted to the 11/11/6 course (11 am to 11 pm, 6 days a week) for six months, after completing which they are placed in jobs which typically start at ₹5 lakh per annum. The school even offers a stipend of ₹10,000 a month to students who need it and payment for the course is made by the student only after he or she is placed.

Flash in the Pan Versus Here to Stay

The million-dollar question is whether these new institutions and programmes will last the test of time. Those vested in the higher education sector point out that the first job for a graduate from any institution is only a stepping stone to a long journey and the alumni and network built while studying is usually the reason many opt for the institution, more than the academic learning imparted.

IIM-A alumni Roy K. Cherian, who is currently anchoring the askIIMA portal for the institute, an initiative that will allow the institute’s alumni to give career advice to anyone who needs it, said that most of these programmes are aimed at targeting “affluent” parents whose children failed to make it into any premier colleges.

“The quality of an institution or a programme depends on the student intake. If the intake is a bunch of sub-par students, the outcome is unlikely to be much better”, he said.

Abhijit Bhaumik, an independent consultant and a former IIM-A graduate, said that trying to teach management or business to 18-19-year-olds is unlikely to work in whatever form it might be packaged. “Even for an MBA, most institutes require or want students to have a minimum 3-4 years of work experience. Trying to teach business to just out of high school novices is in my view a non-starter”, he said, adding that the same goes for entrepreneurship : one needs the maturity to understand entrepreneurship comprehensively. Most founders will face many failures before and if they finally hit success and there are no shortcuts available, he added.

It is here that the bigger issue of whether the authorities should be regulating such courses and institutes comes in. Experts in the sector said that in the absence of clear guidelines, the market becomes a “free for all” and episodes like Byju’s will continue to recur both in the K12 and in the higher education space. The reality is that India suffers from an acute shortage of good quality higher education options and now with the US and overseas options shrinking or looking less attractive, it is to be expected that many more newcomers will jump in. Some will bait anxious parents and students and fizzle out while others might be here to stay and herein lies the rub: separating the wheat from the chaff is easier said than done.