Hyderabad: Nearly about 50% of technically and managerial educated people in India are unemployed. 45pc of those completed MBA, BBA etc management courses and 48pc of engineering graduates – both graduate and postgraduate are either unemployed or switched on to other jobs which they never studied.

The recent survey showed that Karnataka alone has 23,000 unfilled engineering seats and hundreds of techinical education institutions are pulling shutters every year due to lack of admissions.

NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said on Thursday that about 45 per cent of management and 48 per cent of engineering students in the country are unemployed.

Kumar said this while addressing a virtual event ‘Higher Education Dialogue’, organised Indian School of Business (ISB). He expressed concerns over the weakening of higher education in the country

He said the higher education institutions have registered only 37 per cent strength. Kumar also said that higher education is stagnant in India and as a result, institutions like ISB and IIM are also suffering from low enrolment.

Airing concerns over India’s budgetary allocation on research and development, the NITI Aayog VC said India spends only 0.8 per cent of its budget on R&D annually and the country is lagging far behind in innovation. “While countries like South Korea spends 4.5 per cent of their budgets and are masters in R&D,” Kumar said.

Calling the management institutions to come together, he said that association between multiple institutions is bound to produce good results and will help enhance the quality of education among the