MYSORE, India — Employers around the world share a familiar complaint: Universities often fail to prepare students for rapidly changing job demands. Too many new graduates need additional preparation before they are ready to enter the job market.
In India, rather than waiting for higher education to catch up, large employers are designing their own training programs for new employees. This is a model that provides insight into where some American companies might be heading.
Rishi Agrawal is no stranger to the college-career gap, and the solution offered by an influential company. He grew up in a small village in central India. His parents didn’t go to college, but he recently earned a degree in computer science from a private engineering college in Bhopal.
Enrollment in Indian universities has more than tripled since 2005, from 14.3 million to 43.3 million, making it the world’s second-largest post-secondary sector after China.
But the country’s higher education system is uneven, to say the least. “At typical Indian universities, the course is quite outdated,” Agrawal told me in December. He said outdated textbooks and late professors at his college, which is affiliated with a large state university, frustrated him. “The course was about 20 years old.”
It is a lament shared by many others, in India and beyond. Sixty-three percent of major global employers surveyed for the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 called skills gaps a “major barrier” to business transformation. Other analyzes found a significant disconnection between the large number of education providers around the world who believe their graduates are work-ready and employers who disagree.
Agrawal found his answer at an unusual school created by Infosys, the Indian multinational services and consulting company – a 337-acre campus with dormitories and food courts, where he strives to fill the gaps left by his academic studies. He and thousands of other fresh engineering graduates were recently immersed in a month-long boot camp at Infosys’ Global Education Center in Mysore, which the company launched 20 years ago. It is run according to the routines of a university but built around customer needs and deadlines rather than academic calendars. When I visited in late 2025, the plan was to accommodate and train 9,000 “new arrivals,” or new recruits, at a time.
For American observers, perhaps the most telling aspect of the program is what it assumes about degrees: They signal aptitude but not preparation. Infosys hires large numbers of graduates, then views professional competence as something to be taught – and measured by repeated assessments – rather than something universities can reliably offer.
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Infosys has created what it calls one of the world’s largest corporate universities to turn newly hired college graduates into employees ready to take on real projects. The company, founded in 1981 and now headquartered in Bangalore, has revenues of $19.3 billion in 2025. It needs skilled software engineers for client projects ranging from optimizing Lufthansa’s flight operations to replacing the payroll platform of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. Other Indian multinationals, including Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL, also offer huge in-house training programs.
American companies have responded to what they see as gaps in higher education by creating their own virtual, residential training centers for new and seasoned employees, from Accenture’s New Joiner Experience to KPMG’s Lakehouse in Florida and Deloitte University in Texas. Intuit’s new Career Pipeline program aims to start even earlier, providing college accounting students with real-world experience so they can be work-ready from day one.
The difference is not that American companies don’t train, but rather that few attempt to create a carefully structured, campus-based finishing school to recruit entry-level graduates on this scale.
Infosys has taken this push further than almost anyone. Each weekday morning, trainees walk along wide, palm-lined paths, past amenities such as a huge cricket pitch and the campus pharmacy, to reach the domed classroom complex where many of the sessions take place. They spend long days in the classroom learning everything from agentic AI techniques to softer skills like writing effective emails and working in a team. “They expect us to be very professional,” says Agrawal.
These interns, some of whom have earned engineering degrees in fields other than computer science, start with about eight weeks on fundamental computer science concepts that every programmer should know, including algorithms, databases and object-oriented programming. They are then assigned to one of dozens of specializations based on business needs, spending around 10 weeks on areas such as big data, cloud computing and AI. Soft skills training is woven throughout the program, from giving presentations to asserting yourself without becoming aggressive.
On a beautiful December day, instructor Meenakshi S.’s multilevel classroom buzzes with quiet conversations. With a small dataset of mock patient records, interns write Python code to predict annual health care costs. When a student wonders why data needs to be standardized, Dr. Meenakshi points out that information such as blood pressure and glucose levels are measured in different units. “Most of our classes will be 60 or 70 percent practical rather than conceptual or theoretical,” she told me afterward.
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According to Infosys, turning new recruits into billable employees costs around $8,000 per recruit and takes 19 to 23 weeks. New recruits are paid during the program, but each must pass a series of assessments to remain as full-fledged “Infoscions.”
Between 5 and 8 percent are eliminated, says Satheesha Nanjappa, a 33-year company veteran who started the training center at the behest of founder Narayana Murthy. “We don’t want to lose people, because we hired them and we pay them a salary,” he explains. “But at the same time, if someone can’t succeed or qualify, then they need to leave the company.”
Intern Vyoma Venkatesh said the behavioral skills courses were immediately helpful in thinking about client work. Infosys considers “customer centricity” a skill you can practice, right down to how you phrase an email about an unexpected delay or try to clarify what a customer wants. She thought she was already pretty good at writing emails, but one lesson about delivering bad news stuck with her: “You have to make sure people feel cared for.” »
The 20,000 young people who complete the training program each year come from all over the vast country, with enormous linguistic and cultural differences. Some come from megacities, others from small towns. Many are living away from home for the first time. They must learn to communicate confidently in “business English,” collaborate with a wide variety of classmates, and feel comfortable in their upscale environment.
Sundar KS, who heads the program, explains: “It’s all about people who have strong generic knowledge and can apply it to solve a specific problem. » This pragmatic approach, which allows ample time for interaction and questions, is a far cry from the lectures and rote learning that remain common in many Indian universities.
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During a session on customer satisfaction, instructor Aparna Pappu asks, “How many of you look at restaurant reviews?” » Students’ hands go up, then go up again when she asks about product reviews and Instagram comments. As they discuss how to meet customer needs, one intern points out a challenge: “The customer doesn’t always say exactly what they want. » Pappu tells them that empathy is crucial: understanding the customer’s business well enough to predict problems and offer useful solutions.
Indian universities, like their American counterparts, are doing more to improve their hands-on offerings, but Infosys remains committed to investing in training. The chasm between what the industry wants and what graduates bring will continue “for the foreseeable future,” predicts Mohandas Pai, former CFO of Infosys. Given the explosive growth of India’s highly variable universities, it’s “like living in a fairy tale” to expect the postsecondary system to produce work-ready graduates, Pai, now a startup investor, told me in his Bangalore office.
Infosys could be an extreme case, with an approach shaped by India’s size and underperforming institutions. But the direction ahead is clear: more and more companies in many countries are looking at how to turn recent graduates into workforce contributors. Whether corporate education becomes a complement to universities, or a parallel system that quietly replaces some of what a degree previously meant, could shape the next phase of the college-to-work journey.
Contact publisher Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org Or jpm.82 on Signal.
This story was adapted from a book the author is writing for Johns Hopkins University Press about what the United States can learn from other countries’ work-oriented education models.
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