Coursera Campus Skills Report 2022: Indian students acquiring skills to be employable in the country’s fast-growing digital economy

New Delhi: Coursera, Inc. (NYSE: COUR), one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, today launched its Campus Skills Report 2022. The report explores skill proficiencies, career preferences and skill trends among students worldwide. It also identifies key steps that higher education institutions can take to better align with industry, improve graduate employability, and increase student enrollments. According to Coursera data, Indian students are preparing for jobs in the fast-growing digital economy, building foundational and emerging digital skills like HTML and CSS, Cloud Computing, Blockchain and C programming.

India has the highest number of registered campus students on Coursera. The report reveals that by investing in cutting-edge digital skills, students are preparing to enter high-growth technology jobs like data scientist, data analyst, software engineer, and machine learning engineer. In India, the most in-demand job for Coursera for Campus students is Software Engineering (18%). In addition, 15% of Indian students aspire to be Data Scientists, while 6% selected Data Analysts as their top career choice.

“Higher education institutions will play a critical role in preparing the next generation of talent for career success in the fast-changing knowledge economy,” said Raghav Gupta, Managing Director, India and APAC, Coursera. “It is encouraging to see that Indian campuses are equipping the world’s largest youth population to thrive in the digital future, drive innovation and navigate change and disruption.”

Indian students are graduating into a labor market that demands new skills – reshaped by automation and the pandemic. The report shows strong alignment between the skills trends among Indian campus learners on Coursera, and the country’s National Education Policy that puts spotlight on youth employability and skills-based education. Indian higher education institutions are increasingly building their digital competencies and exploring high-quality online learning options to arm students with in-demand skills, bridge the industry-academia gap, and bolster employability.

“The pandemic accelerated the adoption of blended classrooms, and encouraged universities to place a greater emphasis on providing students access to industry-aligned, new-age digital skills, and building a foundation for lifelong learning,” added Raghav.

Coursera’s Campus Skills Report 2022 also reveals the following insights:

• Globally, the top jobs by student demand are data scientist, data analyst, software engineer, machine learning engineer, and marketing specialist.
• While students have made some progress in obtaining baseline proficiency in job-relevant skills, the majority have yet to meet the target proficiency needed to transition into these jobs.
• Arts and humanities students who aspire to become professors and K-12 teachers are prioritizing communication, research, and writing skills.
• Business students express similar levels of interest in data analysis and financial analysis as they do in marketing and consulting. To build data fluency, they are seeking out computer programming and machine learning skills.
• Engineering students’ top jobs are software engineer and data scientist, so they are prioritizing core skills like mathematics, statistical programming, and computer programming.
• Data scientist is a preferred job for health sciences students, who are acquiring data analysis, data management, and general statistics skills that can help them contribute to healthcare technology.
• Social sciences students’ top job choices are researcher, data analyst, and economist. To complement their research skills, they are developing statistical programming and business analysis skills.

Drawing from Coursera’s 3.8 million registered student learners across campus customers – of which India accounts for the highest share with 1.7 million students – the report measures the skill proficiencies of campus learners for emerging roles, outlines skill-to-job pathways for 10 academic disciplines, and spotlights learner skill trends for 9 countries.