A college degree isn't what it used to be. Thirty-one per cent of retail sales clerks in the US and 60 per cent of taxi drivers in Korea now have a college degree (up from 1 per cent in 1970). In India, 15 per cent of security guards for high-end agencies have a college degree now (up from zero per cent 10 years ago). But college still has social signalling value-for better marital prospects, career opportunities (employers often use a bachelor's degree as the basic eligibility criterion) and most importantly a unique opportunity for intellectual sampling that also gives young people the time and space to form a world view on the seemingly innocuous question of whether to study history, social science or literature. This is not some arcane academic debate. It's a question I wish I had given more thought about when I was in college because it represents two different world views-whether success is a game of luck or skill.

Manish Sabharwal is chairman, TeamLease Services Manish Sabharwal is chairman, TeamLease Services

Thinkers such as Eric Hobsbawm and Leo Tolstoy believed that life is about circumstances, events and broader forces beyond our control. But with time we realise that life is a combination of both luck and skill. My admission to Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) in Delhi in 1987 with 78 per cent marks would have been impossible today. There are only three possible explanations for this. One possibility is that children today are a lot smarter. I recently spent some time with SRCC students on campus. I agree that they are better dressed and better looking than most of my batchmates. Second possibility is that 95 per cent is the new 78 per cent-grade inflation is surely a problem but this explanation can't explain everything. The third possibility is the most plausible. In 1987, SRCC took 800 students out of 1.2 million who took the Class XII exams but today they take 800 out of 16 million students. The brutal competition for college seats means that students need to look at the bigger picture. There are more career options than before. It is too early for them to decide exactly what they want to do irrespective of the fact that whatever they decide will change with time. There is much more to life than just marks. Here are six things I wish I knew when I started college.

CLASSROOMS OUTSIDE COLLEGES

Poet William Butler Yeats once said education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. Traditional school and college education have been termed as bookish knowledge that does not adequately prepare us for the real world. This means that students should complement their college experience with specialised learning. They should focus on specialised vocational courses but must also acquire digital expertise, communication and soft skills. Students need to get acquainted with online lectures such as TED Talks and sign up for massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera, Udacity and Edx. Lastly, youngsters must think of English not as a language but as an operating system like MS Windows.

LEARNING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS

You can't do anything great alone and need to pay more attention to establishing long-term relationships with your peers, teachers and mentors. Academics in school is a "sampling error" because getting ahead is largely about individual smartness and hard work. But getting ahead in life is largely about working with other people. Life is a team sport and nothing big or meaningful can be accomplished alone. It is easier to make friends in school rather than the workplace because of shared experiences. But the older you get, the more you realise that keeping friends is harder than making them.

ENGAGE WITH DIFFICULT SUBJECTS AND TEACHERS

Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, details in her book Mindset about individuals who believe in either fixed mindsets (capabilities are like one's shoe size or height which cannot be changed) or growth mindset (capabilities are like muscles which can be developed by working out). I would say that a growth mindset is a more important skill than achieving literacy because we all can learn more than we know or believe we are capable of. Difficult subjects are difficult for a reason and anything that does not stretch you is usually not worth doing. On the same note, do remember the difference between a popular teacher and a good teacher. The teachers who push you the hardest will be those you will dislike when you are young. But when you grow older, those will be the ones that you remember most fondly.

READING IS LEARNING LESSONS FOR LIFE

Albert Einstein believed that an education is what is left behind after you have forgotten what you learnt in the classroom. A growth mindset means college is only the start of a lifelong journey of learning and the love of reading is a weapon of freedom. You can become a reasonable expert on any subject in a year. Don't believe in the myth that novels are for pleasure and non-fiction is boring. Pygmalion by G.B. Shaw is the most important management book because of its power of expectations. The biography of the Duke of Marlborough by Winston Churchill is not just a history book but a treatise on strategic alliances and mergers and acquisitions. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie is a meditation on the power of communication, transparency and tolerance. If you wonder why India is poor, read India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha.

BEING COOL IS BEING DIFFERENT

A recent conversation with my "favourite teenager" about being "cool" made me realise how my definition of the word cool has changed as I grew older. Since her favourite insult for older people "is being uncool", I insisted that a "cool teenager" has never existed. It has been and always will be a contradiction. When you are young, you define "being cool" as doing what most other people are doing. But when you grow older, you realise that the cool people are those who don't do what others do. Cool people think hard about who they are because they have learnt that "fashion means never having to decide who you really are".

DOING WELL AND DOING GOOD

Most young people will graduate to a very different India. What will happen in India over the next 10 years does not happen once in a decade or a millennium but once in the lifetime of a country. So young people should not define success in terms of wealth or good looks. Most youngsters think that getting into college or getting a job is like solving a maths problem, but it is actually more like painting a picture. There isn't any right answer and you will get many chances to fix things because the world of work has changed. Employment is no longer a lifetime contract but a taxicab relationship-short and intimate-and current youth will, on average, hold more than five jobs before they are 45 and work in areas way outside their specialisation.

India's future lies in the youths, their confidence, their dreams and imagination. Always remember that a tough mind which makes careful choices should also have a kind heart. Good luck and Godspeed



Manish Sabharwal is chairman, TeamLease Services