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Sign in to unlock →The deck that turned a state’s 42.6% graduate employability crisis into a costed, three-year reform blueprint — and won 1st runners-up nationally.
Strategem 2.0 was a national case competition hosted by Masters’ Union in partnership with CaseUnion. The challenge was a high-stakes public policy and skilling problem — redesigning Punjab’s higher education system to close a structural employability gap. Team Orange Juice from IIM Rohtak (Diya Biswas, Hemangini Vyas, Nikhil Sharma, Sanchi Singhal) finished 1st runners-up against competing B-school teams nationwide.
Only 42.6% of Punjab’s graduates are employable. Youth unemployment rose sharply from 15% to 20.2% between mid-2024 and 2025. The root causes are layered: outdated curriculum with weak job-role alignment, only 12–15% of faculty having industry exposure, fewer than 15% of students in structured apprenticeships, and less than 40% of colleges equipped with LMS or virtual labs. Employers report needing 4–6 months to retrain fresh hires — a cost neither MSMEs nor the state can sustain. The case asked teams to fix this within a ₹150 Cr, three-year government budget.
The deck opens with a sharp root cause analysis — four failure nodes mapped to four cohort segments — before moving into solution design. The team avoids the trap of recommending generic skilling programs. Instead, they build a system-level reform architecture with five interlocking levers: Curriculum Modernisation, Faculty Empowerment, Industry Integration, Digital Infrastructure, and Governance.
The standout slide is the Solution Prioritization Matrix — a 2×2 impact-vs-likelihood grid that ranks all interventions and gives judges a clear view of sequencing logic. This is paired with a 3-year rollout plan that moves from 100 pilot colleges in 2026 to 400+ institutions by 2028.
The digital infrastructure backbone — an AI-enabled Outcomes Dashboard with skill mapping, LMS integration, and real-time placement tracking — is what separates this from most policy decks. It makes the recommendation auditable and performance-linked, addressing the governance gap directly.
The cost-benefit framework shows CSR partnerships and employer co-funding reduce net government spend by approximately 50% in Year 1, making the budget case airtight.
Key learning takeaways for students:
Total reform budget: ₹150 Cr over 3 years. Employability target: 45% → 70% by 2028. Apprenticeship participation: 20% (2026) → 50–60% (2028). Students skilled: 1 lakh (2026) → 5 lakh+ (2028). Faculty trained: 300 → 1,500. Cost per student over 3 years: ₹1,500–₹2,000. Talent Van cost: ₹12–15 lakh, covering 15–20 colleges per year. CSR leverage potential: ₹20–25 Cr. Employer retraining time reduced from 2–6 months to under 1 month. Marketplace matches targeted: 5–6 lakh.
This deck is essential for MBA students and policy aspirants preparing for public sector, consulting, or social impact case rounds. It is a masterclass in translating a complex, multi-stakeholder government problem into a sequenced, costed, and measurable action plan. Students will sharpen their skills in root cause structuring, prioritization frameworks, phased implementation design, and budget allocation logic. Explore more such policy and strategy decks on CaseBuzz.
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