The University Is Running on the Wrong Clock

Generation Z is entering a world of continuous technological and career disruption, but our higher education remains organised around industrial-era assumptions

It can take a few months for a university syllabus to be revised. In just weeks, Generative AI has revolutionized how millions learn. It doesn’t have to be a failure in either case. They are just from different ages. This is the conundrum of higher education these days. The governments announce educational reforms every few years, yet dissatisfaction persists. Students are concerned with being employable. Employers gripe about job readiness. Universities have a poor ability to predict future needs. Policymakers respond in turn with another round of reforms.

India’s education problem is typically perceived as a curriculum, infrastructure, or implementation challenge. Underneath all these is a bigger challenge: how do we reform an institution for the Industrial Age to prepare a generation of people for a life in an era of constant disruption?

Industrial Logic

Higher education was "industrialised" for over 200 years. Economies needed uniformity, differentiation and certainty. Knowledge was scarce. Know-how was localized in institutions. Careers were more or less linear. A degree indicated that one was ready for a profession – and sometimes a career. Universities did an amazing job in meeting that mission. They trained engineers for industrial development, administrators for the modern states, teachers for mass education, and professionals for expanding corporations. It was all good enough for a world where change occurred at a relatively slow pace.

Generation Z is the generation that is living in a different world. There are more ideas and information available than is generally desired. Knowledge is becoming widely spread. Jobs have become non-linear. A professional identity is constantly reconstructed. AI is emerging as a partner to learning and work. The youth entering Universities now will probably change professions and learn new technologies many times in their life. This disconnect can be explained by considering what can be referred to as “the three clocks of education”.

The ‘technology clock’ moves in months. The digital world is transforming the ways people communicate, create and work at an unprecedented rate. Educational systems often have not yet grasped the implications of entire industries changing.

The second is the ‘labour-market clock’ which moves in years. Occupations arise, develop and perish. The life cycle of skills has shortened.

The third is the ‘university clock’. It operates on a 10-year time scale. Committees, approval and regulatory processes are needed for revisions to curriculum. Accreditation cycles are a reward for consistency. Recruitment of faculty is a lengthy process.

These clocks swung in harmony for a large part of the 20th century. But today, that synchronisation has broken down. The failure to reform education over and over is because the policymakers are trying to accelerate the university clock. That’s why just introducing new subjects won’t resolve the problem when knowledge is fast changing.

Global Challenge, Indian Reality

The same issues are being faced by higher education institutions globally. In a generation where the use of AI tools for academic work has become widespread, U.S. and U.K. universities are reimagining assessment. Skills-Future is Singapore’s approach recognising that lifelong learning is the new paradigm and moves towards stacking micro-credentials and cross-institutional recognition.

In an era of continuous change, the present poses a question: How shall people learn throughout their lives?

The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) brought in transformative reforms such as credit bankability (Academic Bank of Credits), multiple entry multiple exit, multidisciplinary learning, and flexibility in the curriculum. These measures are rightfully recognizing a need for learner-centred and flexible pathways. But five years later, it is being implemented inconsistently. Structural barriers like stiff administrative procedures, faculty resistance, accreditation restrictions and lack of capacity still prevent NEP’s vision from being fully realised.

In the interim, AICTE has announced 2025 as the “Year of Artificial Intelligence”, which will involve incorporating the technology in all 14,000 engineering colleges and 40 million students. The council has initiated the model curricula in emerging areas, created AI labs in association with industries and launched faculty development programmes with ATAL Academy. AI has become part of the curriculum for all engineering branches. These are great strides, but could be another curriculum addition and not institutional transformation.

Modular learning is also being tried at Indian universities. Recently, IGNOU in collaboration with Germany’s GIZ introduced micro-credential courses on AI: Data Fundamental and Data Fundamental for Non-Technical Learners on the SWAYAM platform. The NPTEL scheme of IITs provides hundreds of free online courses, which can be accumulated for career enhancement. But these initiatives are not part of the main degree system; they are available to only a small number of students; and they are not yet fully adopted into the national credit-recognition system.

According to the Economic Survey 2024–25, just 8.25 percent of the graduates are working in a job corresponding to their educational level, more than half of them engaged in an elementary or semi-skilled position where they are not expected to bring their educational attainment. The overall employability of graduates fell to 42.6 percent in 2024 despite an increase in AI/ML skills to 46 percent, according to a 2024 employability study. The gap between education and work is real, and it is growing.

Copernican Moment

Knowledge, a scarce commodity, was the basis for organizing educational institutions for centuries. Information is always available. A student can attend lectures, courses, tutorials and participate in professional communities and AI tools virtually from anywhere. The universities are no longer the sole holders of knowledge. Hence their relevance is elsewhere. The ability to make decisions when there is too much information is key. It is at the heart of helping students to differentiate between evidence and opinion, between understanding and information, between wisdom and mere prediction. It involves fostering intellectual communities where disagreement is constructive, ethical thinking is promoted and ideas are challenged, but not swallowed. Judgement is more in short supply than information in a world of plenty. For this reason, a future in higher education cannot be based on delivering content. For one thing, AI will keep changing more rapidly than any course. Information is beyond the scope of universities to compete with machines in.

‘Generation Z’ has a more innate grasp of this world than many institutions. Learning is no longer limited to campus or to one’s lifetime. The university’s continued relevance is that digital ‘nativity’ is not critical judgement nor ethical reasoning. Furthermore, not every Gen Z student is “prepared” for AI because of access disparities in AI tools, digital infrastructure, and student self-directed learning ability. The question is, is it to assume all young people are ready for this world, or to make sure that institutions are ready for all young people?

Educational reform is not just about an additional course, another technology or another vocational programme. It’s a bigger challenge to restructure institutions around adaptability.

India could adapt Singapore’s SkillsFuture model of cross-institutional recognition, allowing credentials to accumulate across universities, online courses and industry certifications. IGNOU’s micro-credentials and IITs’ NPTEL courses provide a foundation, but they need to be integrated into a national framework for seamless credit transfer and recognition.

Universities should establish curriculum review boards with industry professionals to update rapidly changing fields annually or even twice a year. AICTE’s AI mandates and model curricula are a start, but curricula must become continuously evolving rather than periodically revised.

In the age of AI, traditional essays and standardised tests are losing relevance. Assessment should instead reward reasoning, iteration, collaboration and AI-enabled problem-solving—skills that machines cannot easily replicate.

20th universities answered a simple question: What should everyone know? The 21st century demands a harder one: What kind of person should an educated person become? Reform will remain an exercise in tweaking the old system until universities begin answering that second question.

The future is asking them to reimagine their purpose. Institutions that cultivate judgement, adaptability, moral accountability and intellectual strength will help define the century to come. That should be at the heart of India’s educational reform debate.

(The writer is Professor at Christ (Deemed to be University). Views personal.)