Not a choice for most Indian students. A degree plus something you can show - and the second half is what changed.
A degree still opens doors — it is a filter most employers apply before anything else. What has changed is that it is no longer sufficient on its own. Employers have shifted toward candidates who have already worked with specific technologies, tools or processes, which means the question is not degree or skills. It is a degree plus something you can show.
"Skills vs degree" is presented as a choice, generally by someone selling a course. For most students in India it is not a choice at all: the degree is required for eligibility in a large share of roles, for higher study, and for government pathways. Abandoning it to chase certifications is bad advice for most people.
The real change is what happens on top of the degree. The training year that used to follow it has contracted — see what AI is doing to entry-level hiring — so more of that readiness now has to exist before the first job rather than after it.
Something that works and that someone other than you has used or seen.
Even short ones. Exposure to how work actually happens is the point.
One thing you know properly beats five you have touched.
Being able to explain why you made a choice, not just what you built.
Certifications are useful when they are specific, current, and attached to work you can show. They are close to worthless as a substitute for either a degree or a portfolio. A certificate says you completed a course; a project says you can do the thing. Employers filtering hundreds of applicants weight the second far more heavily.
Any specific list of in-demand skills dates quickly, and much of what circulates is written by people selling training in those skills. The durable version of the question is not "which skill" but "who can tell me what is actually being hired for this year" — and that is a conversation, not an article.
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