AI will not replace universities: It will invite them to reflect and rediscover their true purpose

“Let us be clear about what many technology leaders and futurists are suggesting when they argue about the relevance of university degrees in the era of advanced artificial intelligence” — their argument isn’t about the advancements of just AI technologies and their exponential progress — it’s that AI will reach a point where it will make universities irrelevant and potentially replace them with knowledge-driven and content delivery AI systems.

They envision a world where a student never needs to attend a campus to earn a professional degree. Knowledge will be free and credentials will follow skills and ultimately, leading to employability. If the outcome of the university system is entirely focused on developing skills for employment, and if success is measured solely by campus placement metrics, then one could certainly argue that advanced AI-based knowledge and personalised content systems could outperform traditional university systems.

However, if we consider that the university education system extends far beyond employability, the debate takes a different direction. Indeed, the advancement of AI has sparked an important discussion between these two contrasting perspectives.

 “Even a crore kinds of knowledge are ultimately for earning a livelihood” and “Education is not merely vocational but liberating, holistic, and transformative.”

How our universities quietly accepted the smaller version of themselves

In current times, it can be observed that many higher education institutions, somewhere along the way, compromised and prioritised employment over other essential attributes of true education. They packaged knowledge into degrees, degrees into salaries, and salaries into measures of student success and institutional rankings. In chasing these success metrics, institutions drifted from the deeper, comprehensive purpose of education to mere vocational and skill-based training. This is precisely what many technology leaders and futurists are now highlighting, warning universities that, if they define success solely through placement statistics, they may not survive the AI wave.

At the same time, we should consider that their words are prompting higher education institutions to reflect, identify what they have forgotten, and rediscover their deeper purpose-one that “envisions nurturing learners who go beyond academic excellence, demonstrating creativity, emotional intelligence, ethical grounding, empathy, and social responsibility, while mastering 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and digital literacy.” This reflection is essential for institutions to stay relevant and, at the same time, enhance their evaluation mechanisms by integrating all these value components into assessments and measurement criteria.

The hard truth is that universities became vulnerable not because AI became too powerful, but because they quietly accepted a smaller version of themselves and failed to prioritise all the existing value propositionsqualitatively.

Perspectives of Indian education system

From the Indian perspective, education was never really about what you could do-it was about who you became. Swami Vivekananda did not describe education as a transfer of information; he referred to it as “the manifestation of the perfection already in man.”

That is a fundamentally different starting point. You are not filling an empty vessel; you are drawing something out. Rabindranath Tagore wanted students to learn under open skies, in conversation with the world around them, not chained to syllabi. Mahatma Gandhi insisted that true education must involve the hands, the community, and the moral self. These were not idealistic or impractical ideasthey were radical. And they remain radical today because most institutions still have not caught up with them.

What NEP 2020 recognised — and what

AI cannot replace India’s National Education Policy 2020, in many ways, recognises these challenges. It encourages institutions to go beyond skill development and employment, emphasising critical thinking, creativity, ethical grounding, and the ability to engage in lifelong learning.

It is also important to note that students often try to emulate faculty in exhibiting values, ethics, and empathy. Current AI systems cannot provide such mentorship, informal learning, and emotional guidance. That is a gap only human education can fill.

AI is not the adversary of the university. It is, in a strange way, its most honest critic. It has stripped away the pretence of what a mediocre education can offer and left behind a real question: if not content delivery, then what? The answer-mentorship, inquiry, ethics, community, character-is the most compelling case for universities that has ever existed. But making that case requires universities to live it, not just describe it in mission statements.

The measurement problem — what is not measuredis not there

Unfortunately, holistic education has been discussed since the initial policy laid out by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and the same emphasis is reflected again in NEP 2020. It is now 2026. The vision is already six years old, yet we are still waiting for implementation with full spirit and rigour. It is also important to understand that, in the institution’s consciousness, “what is measured is what is exists”.

It doesn’t mean students are not developing creativity, ethical judgement, and empathy. These things are happening despite the system, not because of it. If we do not project enough emphasis on these parameters and do not assign value to these characteristics and ignore to need to bring meaningful measurements to these parameters, these components become irrelevant to the student and eventually eliminated. We all understand, there is no perfect mechanism to assess these parameters but at the same time, we do not need a perfect measurement system before we start measuring.

Even the simplest measurement model, if consistently applied, is definitely more powerful than no measurement model. It will certainly create a baseline, defines accountability, and further creates an opportunity and the possibility of improvement.

The moment demands action — not discussion

At this juncture, higher education institutions need to evolve by developing practical implementation guidelines for applying the policy; otherwise, we risk missing the boat and making our higher education system irrelevant.

Change in institutions is always hard. There are structures to protect, traditions to honor, and interests to navigate. But the proverb holds: every step feels difficult until you take the first one. The universities that survive this moment-and thrive in it-will be the ones that stop defending what they were and start rebuilding around what education was always meant to be. The question was never “Do we need universities?” — It was always “What kind of universities do we deserve?”

Author is a Director Hindustan College of Science and Technology, Farah-Mathura; views are personal