By Rajat Aikant Sharma
On the wall of the college hung a clock that never moved.
It wasn’t broken. It was obedient.
Time passed everywhere else—on streets, in markets, in hands that worked—but inside classrooms, minutes waited for approval.
Walk through Dehradun’s Rajpur Road or Haldwani’s markets and the pattern repeats with quiet insistence. The graduate applies. The skilled worker negotiates. One carries certificates. The other carries clients. Uttarakhand’s youth migrate for degrees, then return to discover that the plumber who stayed behind now out-earns them by margins that would have seemed impossible a decade ago.
Outside the college gate, a plumber recalculates his day: ₹1,200 for routine work, ₹2,000 for urgency, ₹2,500 for panic. No syllabus. No certificates—just skill negotiating directly with demand. Inside, students collect degrees the way earlier generations collected land, believing ownership guaranteed security. BA. MBA. Another “future-ready” course. Each promises employability. Each delivers eligibility.
Eligibility sounds like arrival.
It actually means permission to wait.
The electrician upgraded his skills and raised his rates from ₹1,500 to ₹2,500 a day. The mason moved from labour to supervision—₹35,000 a month became ₹50,000, then more as trust followed him. In Mussoorie, a self-taught homestay operator nets ₹40,000 during season while a hotel-management graduate waits for a ₹12,000 front-desk job. Delivery partners optimise routes and cross ₹30,000. Shopkeepers read demand better than spreadsheets ever taught.
Their income compounds monthly.
Degrees depreciate quietly.
This is not an isolated phenomenon. Across India, skilled tradespeople are out-earning degree holders by margins that grow each year. But in Uttarakhand, where migration for education has been a generational pattern, the contrast cuts deeper. Families invest in degrees expecting urban prosperity. What often returns instead is debt and disappointment.
A System that Produces Credentials, Not Capability
Once, degrees were bridges to opportunity. Today they are frozen maps in a moving world. Skills adapt. Degrees defend their past. The market rewards relevance, speed and efficiency. Static learning loses bargaining power every year.
Yet colleges keep opening—not because jobs exist, but because approvals do. Uttarakhand has seen dozens of new colleges in the past decade. Each receives affiliation. Each recruits students. Few track what happens after the convocation photographs fade.
Degrees permit hope. Institutions monetise it. Governance preserves it.
This is not an indictment of teachers—many pour everything into classrooms despite impossible constraints. It is a systemic failure. Syllabi update every few years while industries transform every few months. By the time curriculum committees approve a change, the skill it addresses is already obsolete.
The graduate enters the job market at ₹10,000–15,000. Maybe ₹20,000 if luck cooperates. Salaries plateau unless constant re-skilling intervenes. Meanwhile, skills respond instantly to demand. They rise, adjust and earn. A carpenter working on hillside construction often commands higher rates than an office assistant with a BA.
The difference is not just income.
It is agency.
The Classroom Frozen in Time
A child entering school today will graduate into a world where careers reset every three years, skills expire every two and machines collaborate without asking permission. Yet classrooms remain unchanged—one syllabus, one path, one outdated promise.
That child will face artificial intelligence absorbing routine tasks, industries that do not yet exist becoming dominant employers, and credentials that matter less than demonstrable capability. The World Economic Forum estimates that 44 per cent of worker skills will be disrupted by 2027. Our education system, however, continues to optimise for stability in a world defined by flux.
In Dehradun’s coaching centres, students prepare for government exams seeking security. The irony is stark: they spend years qualifying for positions that may not exist in their current form by the time they retire. The safest bet, it turns out, is not learning to arrive—but learning to adapt.
What the Market Actually Rewards
The skilled tradesperson does more than earn—they control their economic destiny. They set rates, choose clients and scale through reputation. An electrician builds a client base, trains apprentices and supervises teams. A plumber specialises in solar systems and doubles his rates. A beautician learns advanced techniques online and opens a small studio.
These are not exceptions. They are the emerging pattern. What they share is not formal education, but the ability to identify demand, acquire relevant skills quickly and deliver value people will pay for. The degree promised this pathway. Skills actually provide it.
Meanwhile, the graduate discovers that their credential is identical to thousands of others. In a stack of similar resumes, salary becomes a race to the bottom. No one, however, bargains down the plumber who is the only one available when a pipe bursts at midnight.
Two Futures Taking Shape
There will be no dramatic collapse. Only quieter classrooms, weaker placements and louder frustration. Colleges will not shut down. They will fade—like landlines, encyclopaedias and certainty.
Parents will continue investing in degrees because the alternative feels too risky. “At least get the degree,” they will say—unaware that “at least” has become the ceiling, not the floor. The degree becomes insurance against judgment rather than investment in capability.
Some economists foresee a future Universal Basic Income—a minimum survival payment when artificial intelligence handles productivity. It may arrive. But that future will divide cleanly. The skilled will earn above the system.
The rest will be maintained by it—and replaced quietly.
Degrees alone will not decide which side one stands on.
What the Mountains Always Knew
The future is not anti-education. It is anti-illusion. And the most expensive illusion of our time is believing certificates can substitute capability.
In Uttarakhand’s valleys, this was never abstract. Farmers judge by harvest. Builders judge by structures that stand. Clients judge by problems solved. Skill has always mattered more than paper.
The only difference now is that the rest of India is catching up to what the mountains already understood.
The clock on the college wall still hasn’t moved.
Outside, time has already decided.
And it rewards only those who learn to move with it.
(Rajat Aikant Sharma is a writer and photojournalist exploring culture, history, and
human stories. Beyond print, he creates digital content, posters, and social campaigns
that extend his editorial voice into the world of influencer engagement and brand
storytelling.)
