About one million AI-skilled professionals will be required in 2026 to meet industry demands in a rapidly changing job market, says a government report titled: India’s AI Revolution - A Roadmap to Vikshit Bharat. Another official report forecasts India’s AI industry to be touching $28.8 billion in the current financial year. Even industrial sectors, especially Aerospace, Agriculture, E-Commerce, Manufacturing, Retail and Supply Chain, are undergoing a churning to find best answers to AI’s inevitability in business.
So, as AI reshapes the global workforce, Indian universities now face the onus of making democracy of AI knowledge a reality. They are under mounting pressure to reinvent how they prepare students for the future as they try to bridge the gap between the need to embrace AI and its effective application. AI is advancing so rapidly in every perceptible sphere of activity that the line separating human and machine is becoming increasingly blurred.
As the debate now revolves around which jobs will endure and which have an expiry date, the conversation in higher education is moving to what skills and mindsets students should cultivate to thrive in the immediate future. Much as we deliberate on this topic, jobs are already beginning to emerge, ones that leverage AI thereby adding to the strong demand for AI-trained professionals. Positions such as AI ethicist, prompt engineer, algorithm auditor, AI-assisted content creator, digital wellness coach, human-AI interaction designer, and MLOps specialist are surfacing fast. These positions call for more than just technical skills; they also require ethical judgment, creativity and interdisciplinary thinking.
Although a sizeable section of the state-run and private education are incorporating AI in their curricula, what, however, remains a stumbling block on the path to India’s goals in this regard is the significant shortage the country is facing in the number of AI experts it has in its skills bank vis-a-vis the demand. According to BCG’s ‘GenAI Adoption Conundrum’ report, only half the demand is being met, with a 53 per cent gap predicted by 2026. Against this backdrop, companies are investing substantially in upskilling the workforce though the challenge to integrate AI into the working system remains due to structural handicaps. To do away with this problem, universities across the board should weave AI into every course and bring in experts that would ensure AI-driven critical thinking and creativity among the student community.
This AI-led disruption also implies that the boundaries of your learning, even if you are a professional, will continue to expand, which is likely to be mission-critical for rewarding careers in the near future. Universities need to create living scaffolds for stackable mini courses, micro-credentials and modular certificates that allow working professionals to continually reskill.
AI is still far from gaining a definite form. Therefore, the crying need of the hour is to transform our students into innovators and risk-takers. Educators want to instill in students an ingenious mindset that would have them experiment, fail, and try again — prepared to generate new opportunities and accept paradigm shifts rather than simply play the existing default career market.
To keep up with real-world needs, universities have to intensify their collaboration with industry giants, start-ups, NGOs and governments. These partnerships can help students gain experiences of actualness, enhanced perceptibility, live projects and mentorship in emerging work roles. Educators have to lead from the front. Academic leaders at some universities, however, are prioritizing faculty training in AI tools and encouraging cross-disciplinary research combining technology with social and ethical inquiry.
As we see it today, AI is no longer a niche topic limited to computer science. Educators and industry leaders should first equip themselves with workable AI knowledge and then make every student or professional clearly understand AI’s mechanics, applications and ethical concerns. Ethical literacy is key to making sure AI answers are built on human values. Instead of memorization and exam-based assessment, colleges need to be moving to project-based assessment. These emphasize problem-solving, creativity and collaboration — the type of skills required in real-world work environments.
That said, AI could also amplify existing inequalities if training and tooling are available only to a select few. Universities ought to be aggressive about ensuring that AI knowledge is in place for every student to access it, irrespective of their background.
As AI-focused jobs hit the mainstream, to be a misfit in a universe of the advantaged can impede the nation’s AI dreams. Broad policy-level changes echoing the workforce’s evolving demand should emerge. Today’s education models need to move past rote-based systems towards interdisciplinary, flexible education that nurtures both technical and soft skills. We need a national plan to coordinate and incentivize such AI-integrated courses, encourage public-private collaborations and fund faculty reskilling and AI research across disciplines. Policies must also guarantee equal opportunity in AI education and infrastructure in tier-2 and tier-3 cities lest they cause greater digital divides. With a nimble and visionary education policy, India can future-proof its talent pipeline, and help guide the world's AI infrastructure.
India’s higher education sector is at the crossroads. Universities can't remain mere credentialing bodies any longer; they have to become machines of creativity and of ethics as well. Their graduates must be more than job-ready. They need to be ready to captain a future of tech rule changes. It is against this backdrop that Indian universities, by adopting a bold and dynamic mindset, can help mould the AI wave, and not get abraded by it.
(Prof. (Dr.) Dwarika Prasad Uniyal is Vice-Chancellor (i/c), RV University)