India’s failing higher education system is churning out engineers who take two to three years to recover from the damage, says  Phaneesh Murthy, CEO of Indian outsourcing company, iGate Patni in an article in Fast Company magazine. The damage done by the education system is so bad that company’s like iGate have to invest heavily in retraining them inhouse.

To add to India’s education woes, a recent report said several engineering colleges in the country’s most literate state, Kerala, have pass rates below 20%. To know more about this, read my friend Brijesh Nair’s blog.

 A large number of Indian engineering colleges with poor infrastructure are setting Indian students up for failure. Add to that, there are greedy parents who want their children to get admitted in an engineering college for money. With 500 million people under the age of 25, India’s greatest challenge in coming years will be a lack of talent. If population is an indicator of global labor supply, increasing access to high quality education is the only solution for India to prosper in coming years.

As long as the Indian education system fails its customers, the US and other developed economies will have ample time to develop a new generation of students who will have the creativity and skills to innovate. President Obama can sleep well as India has lots of catching up to do.