(from NyTimes)--Ghaziabad, India — In a simple classroom above a storefront on a bustling street, four young men crowded around the colorful innards of an open computer hard drive while their teacher explained in Hindi how it all worked.

The computer repair course was among 25 offerings at Gras Academy, a private institution with 58 skills training centers across India, including this one in Ghaziabad, a city on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Gras is one of a burgeoning number of private academies providing hands-on job training in India, filling a gap between government vocational centers and four-year universities. These schools — which offer short, practical, nondegree programs — have been growing since the early 2000s.

India has a vast population of young people, with more than half of its population of 1.2 billion younger than 25. It faces the immense challenge of harnessing this generation as a productive work force, or else facing the combustible prospect of hundreds of millions of unemployed youth in the future. The Indian government estimates that 500 million young people must be trained by 2022 and has made skills training a major policy issue.

Inderjeet Singh, 19, is a first-year student at a government college; but attendance there is not mandatory, giving him time to attend Gras’s computer repair class. His college tuition is about 5,000 rupees, or less than $90, per year, but he is willing to pay 22,000 rupees for the six-month Gras course. He thinks it will be worth it, because 70 percent to 75 percent of Gras’s graduates find jobs immediately, according to the academy.

“I want practical knowledge from school,” he said. “Sometimes it is easier to understand practical knowledge, rather than theory.”

Since 2006, Gras has trained about 28,000 students in 10 Indian states. More than 60 percent take technical courses on computer networking, accounting, and computer and cellphone repair. Service industry training is popular for those who want work in shops, restaurants and hotels, as are courses for future plumbers, electricians and beauticians.

Kanchan Sharma, a slight 17-year-old, is taking a six-month accounting course at Gras, where she is one of 15 students in a room equipped with several computers. She is also in her first year of a college, where she is one of 50 students in a correspondence course that offers little practical training. Most government college accounting classes, including hers, do not teach the software that most Indian companies use.

“Here, classes are smaller and the quality of teachers is good,” she said of Gras. “Plus, what we are being taught is practical and linked to industry.”

She pays 18,000 rupees for the Gras course in hopes that it will result in a job that will help her support her family.

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