60% of India’s 15 million freelancers are under 30. 48% of engineering graduates can’t find jobs. The engineering students gig economy has exploded, with Millennials and Gen Z making up 65% of blue-collar job applications.
Walk into any tier-2 engineering hostel at 8 PM. Students who sat through data structures lectures are finishing freelance coding projects or getting ready for delivery shifts. One activity is supposed to make them engineers. The other pays their phone bills.
India’s gig workforce jumped from 7.7 million in 2020-21 to 12 million in 2024-25, and government projections expect 23.5 million by 2030. This isn’t fringe work anymore. It’s how young people are actually entering the economy while their degrees gather dust.
But here’s what nobody’s saying out loud: if students are teaching themselves employable skills through gig platforms, what are we paying engineering colleges for?
Where Engineering Students Actually Learn: The Gig Economy as Skills University
Ask a third-year CS student what they learned this semester. From college: operating systems architecture, compiler design theory, but from gig work: how to scope a project with vague requirements, handle clients who change specs at midnight, estimate realistic timelines, debug when Stack Overflow fails, and a real deadline looms.
Students freelance in web development, app development, content writing, digital marketing, video editing, and SEO. Many create question banks for engineering entrance exams, which is darkly funny when you think about it. These aren’t niche skills. Every graduate should know this stuff. But, they’re learning it after class on platforms never meant to be educational institutions.
Then there’s the blue-collar boom. Delivery driver applications from 20 to 23-year-olds jumped 50.7% year-on-year. Labourer roles saw a 98% increase, with 136% growth in the same age group. Quick commerce hired 40,000 workers in Q4 2024 alone and created 500,000 jobs by 2025. By 2030, 70% of India’s projected 90 million new jobs will be blue-collar.
Why? A Swiggy delivery partner earns more predictably than many campus placements. You start earning today instead of gambling four years on a degree the market doesn’t value. And AI can’t deliver biryani at 11 PM (yet!).
Platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, Internshala, and Fiverr became India’s accidental training ground. They offer something colleges can’t: immediate feedback. Bad code? Client rejects it. Late delivery? Rating drops. You learn fast because real consequences force you to. Compare that to a college assessment; code that compiles passes. Whether it solves actual problems, scales, or survives real users doesn’t matter. Students get marks and graduate, thinking they learned something. Then the job market corrects them.
The Dropout Math: Why Engineering Students Leave for Gig Work
Secondary dropout rates fell to 8.2% in 2024-25 from 10.9% earlier. Sounds good until you ask why students stay enrolled. Many are hedging bets. Keep the degree as insurance while building real skills through gig work.
But that dropout number hides a bigger question. What about students who physically attend but mentally check out? Who invests real effort into freelance portfolios instead of assignments?
Look at Pune. Educated youth with college degrees are registering as cab drivers because it offers autonomy and income that entry-level jobs can’t match. When a 20-year-old can earn ₹30,000 monthly freelancing or ₹20,000 driving versus waiting four years for a ₹25,000 monthly campus placement, what’s the rational choice? The data says stay in college. The market says otherwise.
Short-term, gig work provides money and agency. It can fund continued education, reduce family pressure, and build real-world experience. Long term, it’s riskier. Government estimates suggest 90% of gig workers lack savings for emergencies. Precarious contract work doesn’t build security. Career growth is tied to hours worked or algorithmic demand, not structured skill accumulation.
Students who drop out fully trade formal qualification networks and recognized credentials for immediate income. The gamble is whether education is too slow to feel useful in a tight labor market where youth unemployment for ages 15-29 sits above 10% despite economic growth.
So, Why Not Just Wait?
The traditional argument goes: yes, colleges don’t teach practical skills, but you’d learn them in your first job anyway. So why not wait four years, get the degree, then learn on the job like every generation before? Because the math has changed. Previous generations could afford delayed gratification because the payoff was certain. Four years of college reliably led to jobs that justified the investment. That contract is broken.
When 48% of graduates face unemployment and those who do get placed earn ₹25,000 monthly while carrying debt, waiting four years isn’t patience – it’s a gamble. The gig economy offers ₹20-30K immediately with no debt and no waiting.
But here’s the harder question: is this just economic rationality, or are we seeing a generational shift where delayed gratification itself is rejected? When Gen Z chooses immediate gig income over potential formal employment, are they:
- Making smart economic calculations in an uncertain market?
- Exhibiting cultural impatience that will harm long-term career growth?
- Rationally adapting to an economy where traditional career ladders no longer exist?
The answer is probably all three, in different proportions for different students. The privileged ones freelancing for experience and autonomy are making cultural choices. The ones delivering food to pay bills are making survival choices. But the system treats them all the same way – as dropouts from the ‘proper’ path.
Why Engineering Students See Gig Work as Career, Not Side Hustle
Older generations saw work as a ladder inside one company or sector. Gen Z combines multiple income streams, works irregular hours, switches platforms frequently, uses digital tools to build a reputation, and values autonomy over hierarchy.
Surveys show most young Indians view gig work positively, not as a side hustle but as legitimate income and career development. This doesn’t mean they reject education. They redefine its value. Credentials matter less when you can demonstrate capability and earnings earlier.
This reflects a practical realization: when formal labor markets can’t absorb graduates, people adapt. And adaptation becomes normal.
The Engineering Students Gig Economy Doesn’t Serve
Here’s the part that should worry everyone. This parallel education system works if you already have advantages. English-medium background. Urban location. Laptop. Reliable internet. Family support while building portfolios.
Everyone else? They have just their degree, which the market decided isn’t worth much. The average freelancer’s income is ₹20 lakh annually, and 23% earn over ₹40 lakh. But students starting out compete in oversaturated markets, often charging nothing just for credibility. Delivery workers face different math: zero job security, minimal to no benefits, and income volatility that makes planning impossible.
The gig economy isn’t democratizing opportunity. It’s amplifying inequality while pretending flexibility equals fairness.
What Happens Next in Gig Economy
The gig economy will hit 23.5 million workers by 2030. Students will increasingly blend education and income: pursuing degrees while doing gig work, using gigs as stopgaps before formal employment, or prioritizing income first and returning to education later.
The question is whether institutions adapt or continue to produce unemployable graduates.
What Actually Needs to Change
- Don’t discourage gig work. Students are making rational choices with terrible options. The problem isn’t that they’re freelancing. The problem is they have to.
- Make formal education worth the investment. Teach through real problems with unclear requirements, tight deadlines, and actual consequences. Stop testing recall. If AI has the answer in 30 seconds, it shouldn’t be on exams. Test problem-solving under pressure.
- Get faculty who understand today’s market. Professors whose last industry experience was in 2005 can’t prepare students for 2025. Make continuous industry engagement mandatory.
- Design credentials that recognize real-world learning. Partner with platforms to verify gig experience. Build career ladders beyond entry-level gig work.
- Most importantly, stop pretending that skill development can happen in students’ spare time. If they need to freelance to become employable, formal education has failed.
The gig economy will create 90 million jobs. Students will participate because they have no choice. But students shouldn’t teach themselves twice what they should have learned once. That’s not innovation. That’s institutional failure at scale.
