A degree once seemed to mark the end of formal preparation for a career. For a growing number of young people, it is beginning to look more like a starting point. As Youth Day is observed this year under the theme ‘Different Contexts, Common Aspirations’, an increasing number of students are finding themselves drawn towards the same idea: learning cannot stop with a graduation certificate. Short-term courses, specialised certifications, internships, and skills acquired independently are becoming additional layers to a conventional education. Deepak Kulkarni, a soft-skills trainer and former principal of Government Polytechnic, explained that these courses are a way of keeping formal education connected to a rapidly changing world. “The curriculum for a graduation programme is designed for three or four years and normally does not change for a batch or two. Technology is advancing rapidly, and it is difficult for educational institutions to keep changing their curriculum again and again.

 

This is where add-on courses come in,” he said. “They add value to your personality and career. They are also filling the gap between industry and academics, so one can be a job-ready candidate,” he said. “An engineering student may spend four years studying a structured curriculum, while the technology surrounding that discipline changes almost continuously. They cannot wait for teachers to teach them these things. When interviewers inevitably ask them about automation, robotics and so on, and they say ‘this was not part of my curriculum’, it will not be an impressive answer,” he said. “The courses need not always be directly connected to a student’s degree. A commerce or science graduate interested in digital marketing can pursue it as a specialised area, while someone from engineering may explore management or another emerging field.” That additional learning can also become a way of discovering a different professional direction. “Different courses allow changes in career,” Kulkarni said. “This is how you develop extra skills. In fact, my own career has followed that logic.

 

I am a textile engineer and professor, but I studied leadership, customer satisfaction, and academic leadership, so I teach soft skills now,” he said. For young people, reasons for adding to their education are as varied as the circumstances they come from. Saisha Arneja, who holds a post-graduate degree in English literature, started exploring these courses in periods of uncertainty. “I absolutely will not say that arts as a degree is irrelevant. But I also cannot deny that with certain degrees, the job opportunities are a bit limited, so I was confused about what to do.” She began with YouTube videos on digital marketing before deciding to take a paid course and earn certifications. Alongside it, she also did professional design software courses and took up unpaid internships. “Learning by doing was the most efficient way to learn,” she said. “I was understanding the tools and technicalities of my field, as I was learning how they are implemented, and it made me more confident in my skills and knowledge.” Today, she manages branding and promotions for premium home stores despite having no formal degree in marketing. For engineer Vishal Jha, the realisation came from the workplace itself. During the initial days of his graduation, he was relatively passive about building skills beyond his academics. An internship changed that. “I realised that I knew very little. Even though I had gone to a very good college, the market was evolving very rapidly.”

 

He began taking courses in AI and machine learning, and used the remaining years of his graduation to earn recognised certifications. “It is even more important to be updated about current affairs in your field,” he said. Safiya Kausar’s experience takes the idea outside the conventional college-to-career route altogether. Already skilled in embroidery, she was encouraged to turn that ability into a home-based business by her husband. She subsequently also learned digital marketing and graphic designing to help her build and promote her business. Seven years on, the enterprise has given her an independent income. It has also grown beyond her own work: she has trained women from nearby slums in embroidery, and some now work with her. For Saisha, Vishal, Safiya, and thousands others, the contexts differ. The aspiration does not. In an era where the shelf life of professional knowledge is becoming harder to predict, the qualification on paper may increasingly be only one part of what a young person carries into the future. The rest may have to be built, course by course, skill by skill, and sometimes simply by continuing to ask what there is left to learn.