Woke up from my bed and went to college but still in my bed, online college or courses has become a never-ending trend and competition among students and working professional. With competition getting fiercer, the rise of online learning is at a relentless growth in India and globally. Due to recent layoff and economic pressure, upskill of employee and employer is in focus and with higher demand; many companies are offering various category of courses from soft skills to technical language.
Days are gone when an individual wants to learn something he/she would sign up at a bricks-and-mortar institution and attend classes physically. According to KPMG report, online education market in India is at USD 247 and is estimated a growth of 8x over the next 5 years and will reach USD 1.96 billion mark in 2021.
“Globally this is changing for example EY and PwC in the UK now do not ask for a university c o m p l e t i o n certificate – they ask for specific skillsets which could be obtained from a university or an online portal,” says Suchindra Kumar, Director, Advisory Services, Ernst & Young LLP
40 per cent of the four million workforces need to be reskilled in the next five years to stay relevant. For major scale of entry-level job, automation is a huge threat
As per Global Shapers Survey of 25,000 young people from across the world, 77.84% of respondents reported having taken online courses in the past.
India too is also preparing huge section of population to upgrade the skills. Threats from automation and skills have scared a huge section of organized sector especially among IT professional. This lead to increase in the average learner per month. Corporate are betting high on up skilling of their employee. According to NASSCOM, 40 per cent of the four million workforces need to be reskilled in the next five years to stay relevant. For major scale of entry-level job, automation is a huge threat.
Another reason for higher adaption of online degree in India is due to convenience factor, shorter duration of courses, flexible timing, ease of understanding with videos and interactive designing with reasonable price.
A joint report by enterprise technology learning company, Pluralsight and market research firm KANTAR IMRB, found that about 97 per cent of IT professionals believe in upgrading their technology skills. As much as 74 per cent of them have taken part in learning programmes in 2016.
Online course domain has seen a relentless growth in past few years and will see double fold growth in the upcoming future. India stands 2nd in rank of learner base after USA as per Coursera activity and under the age of 18 – 39 years, global present of leaner is 83% while India itself covers 93% of the whole user consumer. Indian is an education hungry market for the online industry for institutional or individual clients. A report from British Council forecast that by 2025 India would have the biggest student-age population in the world.
