It’s unimaginable that over 800,000 students have moved abroad to study spending over INR 45,000 crore on tuition and staying on an annual basis. This trend is predicted as 2.4 million students would be leaving the country by 2024. Trying to discover a strong reason in face of this shocking talent drain is the rigid higher education system and a stiff neck race for exams and marks. The rapid talent drain is not only leading to a skilled labor shortage but also a financial drain in the country. To fix this, many edtechs have emerged to fix the talent drain and fuel financial sustainability in the economy through some exciting initiatives.
Integrated Approach
Edtechs, unlike traditional higher education institutions, use a mix-and-match policy in introducing courses coupled with new-age technology to enhance the learning experience. They bring analytics into accounting and finance subjects so that finance and accounting professionals can look for better career prospects and stay ahead of their competitors. Finance transformation, forensic accounting, US CPA, US CMA, FRM, CFA, and CA courses are a few in that category.
Partnerships
Edtechs to support talent needs, have signed strategic partnerships with foreign universities and organizations to enable wide career scope and upskilling opportunities at an affordable cost and in the shortest time span. As the offerings are supported through flexible platforms and immersive, it is widely welcomed by fresh graduates and working professionals. As the fee structure is far less than the foreign universities, students and professionals can pay back the loans with the commensurate income they get after completing their course. For instance, the average median salary of a CPA holder in India comes to around 11 LPA. On the other hand, a data science engineer with specialization in full-stack, Java, or DevOps gets a salary hike of 400%.
Domain-specific Certifications/Programs
To provide a window of stability where 75% of companies are fiercely at war for talent, edtech leaders & top-level managers offer domain-specific finance certifications/ accounting and engineering courses. CA and CPA review institutes tie up universities that offer finance transformation programs integrated with analytics track. Korn Ferry estimates the global talent crunch could reach 10.7 million by 2030.
Edtech investments during the pandemic grew from $553 million in 2019 to $2.22 billion in 2022, where out of 96, 61 received seed funding. This strongly suggests that edtechs have the power to bridge the talent supply and demand gap as they are expected to grow 1 trillion by 2028.
