Participate or Perish? The Choice is yours Date:   Monday , December 19, 2016 One more academic year is over. If the employability reports on the fresh graduates are anything to go by, about 30 percent or 45 lakh of the 1.5 crore graduates, produced by a staggering number of over 35,000 higher education institutions in the country are completely unemployed.An ASSOCHAM study reports that except IIMs and a few premier institutions, most of the 5,500 Business schools in the country are producing 'un-employable' sub-par graduates, earning less than Rs. 10,000 a month if at all they find placements. In engineering as well, the situation is not different; the most sought after course in the country is struggling with 80 percent of unemployable graduates. While our graduates are collecting their degrees without being skilled to be a productive part of the ever-developing Indian economy, it is shocking as well as depressing to see unemployment among literates growing faster than illiterates in the country. Though, it's time for our youth to attain industry specific competencies and skills, it is evident that our current education system, which has been functioning at sub-optimal scale, has failed to capture and address pressing issues of un-employability. So, what do we need to do to build locally employable, nationally demanded and globally prepared workforce? Answering this critical question, in this issue of SiliconIndia Education, we present 'Training Institute of the Year 2016.' While, most of us have perceived skilling as the last available opportunity meant for those who have not been able perform well in the formal education system, these institutions have proved that they are not here as an extension of regular university education system, but to augment the skill sets of fresh graduates and professionals who aspire to move up in the corporate ladder. On the cover, we feature IIHT Limited, a pure play IT training company and pan-India learning group with skill development opportunities across all emerging technologies such as Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud.