Graduate employability in India: Why Tier-1 colleges win bigger in non-tech jobs

A placement-season information astir colleges won’t advertise is this: Many assemblage graduates are filtered retired not for what they don’t know, but for what they cannot demonstrate nether pressure, however they operation an answer, explicate a choice, work a brief, oregon clasp their nervus erstwhile the format is unfamiliar.

The syllabus tin beryllium finished; the translation from cognition to workplace output often isn’t.

That translation is wherever assemblage ecosystems softly matter: not lone lectures and notes, but the regular subject of writing, presenting, debating, moving successful teams, and being assessed connected clarity alternatively than recall.A tier-wise snapshot from the Mercer | Mettl India’s Graduate Skill Index 2025 offers a useful, if limited, model into this. It is not a last verdict connected colleges oregon graduates, but it does amusement an uneven pattern: Tier-1 colleges pb overall, yet their vantage appears tighter successful method roles and wider successful non-technical ones.

The accusation is not that 1 tier has ‘better students’, but that definite kinds of readiness—communication-heavy, judgement-heavy, presentation-heavy skills—are much powerfully shaped by field vulnerability and repeated signifier than by contented transportation alone.

The tier spread exists, but it isn’t a cliff

Start with the elemental picture. In 2024, wide employability (as measured by the index) stands astatine 48.4% for Tier-1, 46.1% for Tier-2, and 43.4% for Tier-3.

The numbers are excessively adjacent to enactment the lazy morality tale—“elite campuses nutrient talent, the remainder nutrient excuses”—and excessively acold isolated to beryllium dismissed arsenic statistical noise. They beryllium successful that acquainted grey zone: Enough separation to power outcomes, not capable to explicate the full anxiousness graduates consciousness successful hiring funnels.

So the existent communicative isn’t the spread itself—it’s wherever the spread widens, and why.Employability isn’t conscionable a labour-market verdict; it besides reflects what colleges bid students to do.

Tiers bespeak selection, yes. But they besides bespeak the “invisible curriculum”: How often students are made to constitute clearly, contiguous arguments, enactment successful teams, and marque decisions nether clip pressure—skills that substance successful hiring, but aren’t ever taught oregon assessed seriously.Those tier differences besides bespeak exposure. Internships tin beryllium regular successful immoderate colleges and uncommon successful others. Feedback tin beryllium elaborate and corrective, oregon it tin beryllium cosmetic—a tick successful the margin.

Classrooms tin simulate existent work, with deadlines, ambiguity and trade-offs, oregon they tin stay predictable exam spaces wherever questions get neatly framed. Read carefully, the dataset doesn’t archer you which assemblage is “good”.

It tells you what behaviours the strategy rewards, and what parts of job-readiness excessively galore campuses inactive permission to accidental extracurricular the classroom.

Technical roles: Where the tier vantage shrinks

In method roles, the tier dispersed tightens noticeably. Employability successful method roles successful 2024 is 46.4% (Tier-1), 45.5% (Tier-2), and 43.0% (Tier-3).For a state obsessed with “top colleges”, this should onshore arsenic a corrective. It suggests method readiness—at slightest successful the mode the scale measures it—is nary longer a monopoly of elite campuses. Technical competence is travelling.Why mightiness that beryllium happening? This is due to the fact that method learning has go easier to distribute. Tool entree is broader. Practice materials are abundant. Coding, investigating and front-end pathways are reinforced by online ecosystems.

Many colleges, crossed tiers, present thatch akin foundations. When acquisition becomes much standardised and accomplishment pathways go clearer, the tier punishment shrinks.

Non-tech roles: Where Tier-1 pulls distant harder

Now look astatine non-technical roles, and the tier vantage becomes much pronounced. In 2024, non-technical employability sits astatine 51.1% (Tier-1), 46.9% (Tier-2), and 44.2% (Tier-3). The scale present is explicit connected the direction: Tier-1 is higher crossed each non-technical roles, with Tier-3 lagging crossed the set. This dispersed is telling due to the fact that non-tech hiring is seldom a consecutive trial of taxable knowledge. It is often a trial of workplace readability: Can a postgraduate construe a brief, operation an argument, constitute cleanly, talk with clarity, and support choices without collapsing into vagueness? These are not “soft” add-ons. They are the moving parts of galore introduction roles successful marketing, HR, operations and concern functions. The constituent is not that Tier-2 oregon Tier-3 graduates deficiency talent. It is that the ecosystem advantages of Tier-1 colleges—more predominant presentations, stronger adjacent benchmarking, greater internship density, and regular vulnerability to nonrecreational feedback—tend to bid these behaviours much consistently.In campuses wherever valuation remains heavy exam-shaped, students whitethorn postgraduate with cognition but with less chances to practise show nether existent constraints. That is wherefore the non-tech spread expands: The hiring filter is not lone asking what you know, but how good you tin amusement it.

If 1 relation captures this tier behaviour cleanly, it is integer marketing. The scale puts employability for a integer marketer astatine 55.1% for Tier-1, 47.9% for Tier-2, and 41.8% for Tier-3.This is striking precisely due to the fact that integer selling is wide marketed arsenic accessible: Courses, tools, templates, certifications. Yet the tier punishment persists. That suggests hiring filters present are not purely astir instrumentality familiarity.

They’re astir nonrecreational output: How you framework a problem, constitute a brief, construe information without hand-holding, support trade-offs, pass results, and dependable credible portion doing it.Tier-1 aspirants person a grooming vantage here. And it often comes from a field ecosystem that forces students into repeated show situations that are not optional.

The existent tier spread is what colleges rehearse

The uncomfortable takeaway is not that Tier-1 graduates are “better” oregon that Tier-3 graduates are “behind”.

It is that employability progressively rewards what colleges routinely rehearse. Where skills tin beryllium demonstrated cleanly—especially successful method roles—the tier punishment narrows. Where hiring depends connected judgement, writing, persuasion and nonrecreational clarity, the tier vantage widens. The tier spread is not a mysterious marketplace bias; it is the predictable result of what colleges take to worth and assess.

In that sense, employability functions similar a sorting mechanics that rewards anterior vantage nether the neutral connection of “fit”. It privileges the pupil who has had repeated vulnerability to nonrecreational codes and punishes the pupil who has been trained chiefly to comply with exam patterns.