Every campus placement season, the same conversation plays out between recruiters and university leadership. Students arrive with strong transcripts and solid theoretical knowledge but employers want assurance that this knowledge will translate into actual on-the-job performance. This isn’t unique to India; campuses worldwide are having the same conversation. And it isn’t about student intelligence or effort.
It comes down to how quickly workplaces are changing, and how curricula by design take time to catch up. For decades, universities and industry operated as two separate worlds that occasionally shook hands at convocation. Academia built knowledge for its own sake; industry hired whoever showed up with a degree and trained them from scratch. That arrangement is no longer sustainable not because either side has failed, but because the pace of change around both has accelerated beyond what a once-in-four-years curriculum revision cycle can keep up with.
GLOBAL SHIFT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
This is not a uniquely Indian anxiety. Over the last decade, Canadian universities have switched to a model based on applied learning, co-op programmes, and research linked to industry. Germany’s dual education system regards industry exposure as essential and credit-bearing part of the programme and not just an optional add-on. The academic calendar of Singapore’s polytechnics integrates structured, paid industry attachments. The World Economic Forum’s recurring work on the future of jobs makes the same point year after year: a large share of the skills employers value most did not exist, or did not matter, a decade ago. And tech skills will be important in the next five years. Institutions that keep producing graduates for a job market that no longer exists are doing their students a quiet disservice.
EMPLOYABILITY IN INDIA
There is good news buried in India’s data, and it is worth pausing on: Overall employability has climbed to 56.35 percent in 2026, up from under 47 percent just four years ago, according to the India Skills Report 2026. Women’s employability has overtaken men’s for the first time in five years, aided by hybrid work and industry-linked digital skilling. These are not accidents of demography. They are, in large part, the visible outcomes of industry and institutions beginning to work together with intent. However, the reports serve as a reminder of the remaining distance: Nearly 93% of students say they want internships and real-world experience, according to the India Skills Report 2025, indicating that there is a far greater need for practical learning than there is supply. There is still a chronic disconnect between what companies require and what courses teach, especially in rapidly evolving fields like cybersecurity, data, and artificial intelligence.
ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY
When academia and industry stay apart, everyone pays a price: Students graduate with credentials that promise more than they deliver, and spend their first working years unlearning and relearning on the job — an expensive, demoralising detour for both the individual and the employer footing the bill for that training. Even after a million graduates on board, employers face issues regarding the gap in talent. It has been pointed out that more graduates does not refer to more employable graduates. As families increasingly ask a fair question – what will this degree actually let their child do? – institutions lose relevance, credibility and, eventually, enrollment. Research quality suffers quietly. When academic research is disconnected from the problems industry and society are actually grappling with, it risks becoming an exercise conducted for its own sake rather than one that moves the needle on real challenges in healthcare, climate resilience, manufacturing, and public infrastructure.
WHAT INDUSTRY�ACADEMIA COLLABORATION LOOKS LIKE?
Meaningful industry-academia collaboration is built on a handful of unglamorous, hard-to-fake practices not one-off memoranda of understanding that gather dust after a signing ceremony. l Co-created curricula – Industry practitioners should sit at the table when courses are designed, not just when graduates are interviewed. Curriculum committees that include working professionals from relevant sectors tend to catch obsolescence far earlier than academic review cycles alone. l Embedded, credit-bearing experience – Internships, live projects, and apprenticeships should count toward a degree rather than sit outside it as an afterthought. When nearly all students say they want this kind of exposure, offering it as a scarce, competitive extra rather than a structured entitlement is a missed opportunity. l Engagement with industry mentors – Universities who welcome people from real industries and allow students to engage with them bring that industry outlook back into the classroom in ways no textbook knowledge can match.
FUTURE OF INDIA’S HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM
India’s National Education Policy has opened the door to much of this multidisciplinary learning, credit flexibility, and stronger vocational integration is all written into its intent. But policy intent and campus reality are still two different things, and closing that gap will take sustained effort from university leadership, not just compliance with new frameworks. Industry-academia collaboration is not a favour either side does the other. It is closer to a shared responsibility toward the young people caught in the middle, who deserve an education that prepares them for the world as it actually is, not as it existed when their syllabus was last printed. The institutions, and the industries, that treat this as core work rather than a side project will be the ones that matter most to the next generation of India’s workforce. The rest will simply be teaching yesterday’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.
(THE WRITER IS THE PRO-CHANCELLOR, DNYAAN PRASAD GLOBAL UNIVERSITY (DPGU) BY DR. D.Y PATIL UNITECH SOCIETY)