This document summarizes interviews with parents in India about their child's education and career path. It finds that parents see a college degree from a good school as necessary to get a good job. They are heavily involved in their child's education to ensure they succeed academically and are competitive. The document proposes redesigning the school-to-work transition system so people can get jobs based on skills rather than degrees alone, but notes parents may be reluctant to opt their children into an alternative system due to perceived risk.

1. School-to-Work Transition
Assignment: Design Thinking Labs, Stanford
University (Online)
Dhiraj Khot
dhirajk@gmail.com

2. Interview Questions Asked
1. What is the primary reason for you to send your child
to school/college?
2. How important is degree to getting job? Did you
ponder over alternatives to degree?
3. What are characteristics of good job?
4. What do you want to focus your child on during
schooling?
5. How involved are you in child’s education? Why?
How?
6. Do you have discussions with your child on his / her
future (job?)

3. Preamble for Stakeholder Selection
Parents in India and Asian sub-continent are
(primary) decision makers for child’s career
(college and degree) that leads to job.
Unless their perspectives are considered, the
re-design has risk to fail in this part of the
world.

4. Say
1. Never thought of any alternative to schooling. This
is only system available
2. Schooling is necessary for education. Job / Career
will follow. They will however be happy if they can
choose a career for their child.
3. Cite personal examples on how not having good
degree from good college has resulted into loss (by
not getting a good job)
4. The ultimate truth – good job pays good!

5. Think
1. People with good degree have much higher
probability of getting good job which will
lead to good life
2. Too much risk to opt out of system (by
aiming job without going to school).
3. There is no alternative to schooling and
good degree!

6. Do
1. Pay lot of attention to child’s school / college
2. Spend money to ensure good education (college / degree)
3. Spend time / effort / money to ensure child is competitive and
scores well in education system
4. Try and force child to adopt a career e.g. engineering
Don’t Necessarily Do
1. Check if child is getting ready for doing job
2. Understand child’s perspective / interest

8. Parent
Stake-
holder
Need
1. Need a system to ensure that
their child gets a good job
2. Force their child to be
competitive
Insight
1. So that he/she can earn
good – a necessity of life.
2. So that he/she is not left
out.
1. Feeling of security is at
the heart of the parent.

9. Problem Statement: Redesigning
School to Work Transition
1. To devise a system where people
with/without degree get absorbed into jobs –
purely based on their
capabilities/knowledge.
2. Unless the system is adopted by certain min
number of people, the risk is too high for an
individual parent to adopt it for their child.