80% Students Lack Practical Experience as Apprenticeships Remain Limited: NITI Aayog Report Flags Major Employability Gap

A major gap between education and employment continues to affect India's young workforce, with 80% of higher-education students reporting a lack of practical experience and industry exposure, according to a NITI Aayog report.

The report, Reimagining Skilling for Viksit Bharat@2047, highlights the limited availability of meaningful apprenticeships and internships and calls for urgent reforms to make India's skilling ecosystem more industry-driven and responsive to changing job requirements.

According to the report, 47% of formal workers identify a lack of prior work experience and internships as the biggest challenge when seeking new jobs. The findings underline the difficulty faced by students and early-career professionals in transitioning from classrooms to workplaces.

MSME participation remains low

Despite India's large MSME ecosystem, employer participation in apprenticeships remains limited. The report noted that only around 32,000 of nearly 60 million registered MSMEs had engaged apprentices under the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS).

Participation among ITI trainees has also remained low. Only 8.5% of ITI trainees took up apprenticeships in 2018, indicating a significant gap between vocational education and workplace exposure.

NITI Aayog also flagged limited awareness of credible and high-quality apprenticeship opportunities. Many students reportedly remain uncertain about where to find genuine programmes that can provide meaningful workplace experience.

Multiple platforms create access barriers

The report pointed to the fragmented nature of India's apprenticeship ecosystem as another challenge. The Apprenticeship India Portal, under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, administers NAPS, while the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS) for graduate and diploma apprentices operates separately under the Ministry of Education.

Although the two platforms serve different schemes, their parallel operation can create confusion and make it harder for learners and employers to identify relevant opportunities.

NITI Aayog recommended establishing a single state-level access window that brings together central and state apprenticeship programmes and connects them with the Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH).

Internships often fail to deliver real experience

The report also raised concerns about the quality of workplace learning. Internships and apprenticeships for students and early-career learners can sometimes be short-term or tokenistic, limiting their ability to serve as a genuine bridge between education and employment.

Workplace barriers also include informal gatekeeping by senior employees, particularly in vocational trades. Such practices can restrict knowledge transfer and prevent young workers from progressing into higher-value roles.

Industry-led skilling needed

NITI Aayog has called for India's standalone skilling programmes to move away from top-down, supply-driven models towards demand-driven, outcome-linked and industry-backed programmes.

The report identified industry-led training for high-growth sectors, large-scale employability and entrepreneurship programmes, and reskilling for sectors facing technological disruption as key priorities.

The need for reform is becoming more urgent as artificial intelligence, automation and climate-related changes rapidly reshape job requirements. With India's median age at around 28, NITI Aayog stressed the importance of flexible, industry-aligned and job-ready learning pathways to prepare the country's young workforce for the jobs of the future.