Youth in Kashmir see few government jobs ahead. Rising costs and shrinking returns are draining their belief in higher education.
Jammu and Kashmir has built colleges faster than it has built reasons to attend them.
The numbers tell the story. The Union Territory has added 51 new government degree colleges since 2019. Yet its Gross Enrolment Ratio stood at 21.5 per cent in 2023 to 2024, against a national average of 30 per cent. The number of undergraduates graduating from government colleges reportedly fell from 23,655 to 18,312, a decline of around 22.6 per cent. Of 142 government degree colleges, 100 recorded fewer than 100 admissions each after two rounds. Two have no active enrolment.
Cost explains part of this. There are students whose families could not find Rs 8,000 to fund a yearlong stay in the college. Some tried securing scholarships but found it difficult to get one, for one reason or another.
Something else is at work. Young people no longer believe a degree leads anywhere. For generations, a degree in Kashmir meant a chance at a government job. That promise has worn thin. Thousands of posts lie vacant. Appointments are not being made. Youth know it. They watch graduates wait years for recruitments that never arrive.
Reservations have added to the crisis. Even when the government seeks applications for the jobs, more than half of it goes to the one-third of Jammu and Kashmir’s population, reserved under various categories. Youth understand this arithmetic well.
This is the quiet cost of a stalled recruitment system. It not only closes the window, but it also denies jobs. A student who sees no return on a degree will not stretch a labourer’s wages or a rickshaw driver’s income to pay for one.
Buildings cannot solve this. Scholarships matter, and PMSSS has helped students over the last many years. But aid reaches few when many do not know it exists, and when income certificates are allegedly sold in the open market. Trust is thin on every side.
The remedy is plain. Fill vacancies on a published timetable. Give recruitment calendars the same attention as admission drives. Tell students early which schemes exist. Verify income certificates honestly.
Education cannot survive on classrooms alone. It needs a future waiting at the end. Until Kashmir’s youth can see one, empty seats will keep telling the story.
