A top Indian outsourcer HCL has said that US college graduates were unemployable.

HCL, CEO Vineet Nayar told a gathering of his 50 best customers about a conversation he had with an education official in a large US state. The bureaucrat wanted to know why HCL, a $2.5 billion company with more than 3,000 people across 21 offices in 15 states, wasn't hiring more people in his state.

Vineet told him that most American college grads are "unemployable” because they enter the tech field with the idea that they are going to get rich. They're far less inclined than students from developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Ireland to spend their time learning the "boring" details of tech process, methodology, and tools--ITIL, Six Sigma, and the like. They show up at work and need expensive training.

US universities are not interested in providing their students with the sorts of skills that businesses want, Vineet added. Schools need to bolster competencies in math, the hard sciences, and basic problem solving. They also need to teach global history, foreign languages, and other subjects that prepare students for jobs and life outside this country.