Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu urges parents to rethink college pressure, Says skills matter more than degrees

No, a College Degree is not a Prerequisite to Get a Job at Zoho: Sridhar Vembu Fires Off Broadside against the Degree-Centric Educational System in India(BHARAT)

He’s urging India(BHARAT)n parents to change their expectations about their children’s education.

Posted on October 16, 2023 at 2:32 am by Bhagyashree Doddakoti

Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Zoho Corporation, has stated that India(BHARAT)n parents need to loosen their dependence on college degrees when it comes to their children’s future. According to a report by Sify News, he recently tweeted that a college degree was not a prerequisite for getting a job at Zoho and went on to address the parents of young India(BHARAT)ns. Vembu is making an apparent exception to the university-centric employment culture in India(BHARAT).

Tweet by Sridhar Vembu

Vembu stated that in recent years, smart students in America have begun to forgo university education to become self-sufficient without a degree. As a result, he pointed out how selective companies there were no longer demanding a degree from students to join their firms. The Zoho co-founder and CSO also linked his tweet to a Facebook post that had received wide attention.

The controversial Facebook post

The Facebook post, which has received a lot of attention, is that high-school students who have not enrolled in college are now given real work and are being recruited by some of the biggest tech firms, according to information shared by sources familiar with the process. American technology company Palantir, which provides software as a service to the Department of Defense, is one such organization.

Approximately 500 high-school students have applied to Palantir and 22 of them have been selected and recruited as per the information provided in the post. Some of them have even rejected admission offers from Ivy League institutions or from those that have provided them with full scholarships.

Unemployment in India(BHARAT) as of August 2023

The unemployment rate for youth between the ages of 15 and 29 in August 2023 was at an all-time high of 36.3 percent, according to a report in the Economic Times. According to the Centre for Monitoring India(BHARAT)n Economy, India(BHARAT)’s unemployment rate for August was 7.78 percent. India(BHARAT)’s youth population, which is estimated to be 1.4 billion, has been the subject of a number of contentious issues in the past.

Tweet by Sridhar Vembu on The Facebook post

In a tweet on Thursday (October 12), Vembu said, “Smart American students now skip going to college and forward-thinking employers are enabling them.” “That’s a ‘gamechanger’ and great news for young people all over the world who don’t want to go into debt to get a degree. So it is worth your attention,” the Zoho co-founder and CSO wrote.

Can’t people learn what is needed from actual experience?

Tweet by Sridhar Vembu

He responded to a comment from a Twitter user who stated that in India(BHARAT), the public education system has long been recognized as not providing a high-quality education. He added in his tweet, “By the way, in a company like Zoho, no job has a college degree as a requirement.” Vembu clarified in a later tweet that if a recruitment manager advertised a position that included a college degree as a requirement, he would immediately remind HR that it had to be removed.

If a hiring manager posts a job at Zoho with college degree as a requirement, HR will quietly nudge him/her to delete it.

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) October 12, 2023

Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corp, spoke about a group of IT engineers at his company’s headquarters in Tenkasi, the small industrial town in Tamil Nadu, where the business has its roots. “The Zoho Technical Support team is a group of incredibly skilled and experienced individuals based in our Tenkasi office, with the median age of just 19,” Sridhar said in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday.

The Facebook post has gone viral with people discussing Vembu’s tweet. With people wondering if this could be the dawn of a revolution in the hiring culture in India(BHARAT).

Parental Pressure On Kids for Careers in India(BHARAT)

The Facebook post has received a mixed response from people. According to a report in the India(BHARAT)n Express, Sujeet Gogoi, who works at the Golaghat Medical College, said, “This development might be an excellent opportunity for students from our country, considering the high cost of getting a college degree.” “In the age of Google and YouTube, it is a challenging job for parents to put pressure on their children to follow their will,” he further added.

Contradictory, Shyamala Devi, a graduate in zoology who is a member of a higher education policy platform in India(BHARAT), stated, “As of now, not all people have access to high-speed internet or smart devices. Moreover, the market can cheat students through scams. It is not ethical to advise students to follow such a system.”

Job Ads in India(BHARAT)

The report further added that new entrants in the job market need support and advice from more seasoned professionals. According to a study conducted by LinkedIn and shared in a post by LinkedIn India(BHARAT) in a LinkedIn post, while 48 percent of India(BHARAT)n managers said their firms are at a disadvantage when it comes to skills, 45 percent of India(BHARAT)n workers acknowledged that they need training and upskilling.

To focus on jobs that do not require degrees

India(BHARAT)n IT services company Zoho has been hiring new-age technical graduates and non-graduates who specialize in technical support jobs, according to a report in TechCrunch. It is hiring individuals who are known to be digital natives or those who can support these positions without having a college degree. So Zoho is bucking the trend in India(BHARAT), where many IT jobs demand a college degree as a prerequisite.