Beyond Sanyal's Sensationism: Why India Must Reform, Not Abandon, Its Higher Education Ecosystem

In a recent interview, popular economist Sanjeev Sanyal suggested that India cannot rely on traditional universities to rapidly skill its vast workforce, and that online training will soon become the dominant mode of preparing youth for jobs. He argues:

India’s birth rate peaked around the early 2000s, and

India’s college-age population peaked around the mid-2020s,

Therefore — he suggests — India should rethink the expansion of physical universities and that online skilling platforms could be more useful than physical universities.

This appears intuitive, but his demographic logic is more fragile than it looks.

Demographic Peaks Are Not Permanent: Lessons From the U.S. COVID Baby-Bump

A crucial counter-example comes not from India, but the United States.

During the pandemic, despite fear and disruption, the U.S. experienced a modest but real baby-bump. After a 4% fall in 2020, births actually rose by 1% in 2021 — the first increase in years. Demographers attribute this reversal to:

aggressive government cash support

rapid job recovery

remote-work flexibility

rising household asset values

stabilised family expectations

In short: fertility decline reversed because economic prospects improved.

This matters for India because it shows that demographic trajectories are policy-responsive, not preordained. The notion that India’s declining youth cohort is an irreversible trend is simply incorrect.

If the U.S. — a high-income, low-fertility society — can generate a reversal under the right conditions, India, with far stronger demographic momentum and far greater economic upside, is even more capable of shaping its demographic future.

Thus, demographic slowdown is a planning variable — not an argument for halting university growth.

The Anti-College Thesis: Valid Problems, Wrong Prescription

Sanyal (and others) is correct on several fronts:

Many Indian colleges produce graduates who are not industry-ready.

Most institutions lag behind the frontier in AI adoption and tech integration.

Several universities remain insulated from the real economy.

Curricula are outdated; pedagogy is stagnant.

But the conclusion — that India should stop building universities and that online learning platforms will replace them — is both premature and fundamentally flawed.

Why?

Because universities are not merely “lecture factories”. They are ecosystems, and ecosystems can evolve.

The correct response to stagnation is reform and re-architecture — not abandonment.

The Real Reform: Integrate AI Into Universities, Not Outside Them

Instead of bypassing universities, the smarter strategy is to embed AI and digital skilling inside them.

As I’ve argued in my previous blogposts:

Universities must adopt AI-enabled teaching, real-time learning analytics, auto-generated problem sets, and adaptive tutoring.

AI skilling should be hardwired into degree programs — not sold as external “alternatives.”

Top online platforms should be formal curriculum components, not informal supplements.

To put in other words, AI should not be a substitute for universities — it should be the infrastructure that modernizes them.

Universities Must Become Nodes in India’s Technological & Industrial Ecosystem

India’s next leap will come from DeepTech, industrial digitization, new materials, biotechnology, climate engineering, urban systems, and advanced manufacturing. These are lab-intensive, infrastructure-heavy, collaborative fields.

No amount of YouTube-based self-learning can substitute for:

semiconductor labs

robotics labs

computing clusters

biology and chemistry research

industrial testbeds

digital twin simulation environments

supervised research

structured multidisciplinary teams

Private firms — from Reliance to Tata to Mahindra to Adani to dozens of startups and SMEs — still recruit from universities because recruitment is built on human trust — between educators and employers — not just skill matching.

And that trust cannot be replicated by YouTube tuition credentials.

Universities as Partners of Governmental and Intergovernmental Organizations 

There is a completely ignored dimension in the "universities are dying" narrative:

universities can be powerful development partners to government.

This includes:

Municipal data labs

State government mission support units

District-level SDG tracking

Social development baselining

Public health analytics

Water, sanitation, and mobility research

Environmental monitoring

Policy experimentation

Direct collaboration with UN agencies and global foundations

Elite institutions like IITs and IISc already do this. But India needs a nationwide network of such institutional partnerships. No online learner — however brilliant — can replicate this real-world, high-stakes, system-level engagement.

Industry-Academia-Technology Partnerships Must Be Scaled, Not Restricted

Several elite engineering institutions already have robust collaboration models:

Centre of Excellence programs

Joint R&D projects with large conglomerates

Embedded graduate internships

State-level digital mission partnerships

Technology transfer cells

DeepTech incubation

But these remain siloed inside India’s top 20–30 institutions. The next step is to cascade this ecosystem to state universities, private universities, and teaching-focused colleges.

This is not idealism. This is exactly what Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Germany did during their 1980–2010 industrial transitions.

Secondary and Industrial Schools Must Be Placement-Oriented

The fixation on college versus online courses distracts from the more urgent problem:

India’s secondary and industrial schools are not employment-integrated.

They need:

compulsory internships

apprenticeship pipelines

industry assessments

dual-education models

AI-driven testing systems

work-integrated learning

partnerships with local businesses and MSMEs

municipal and district-level project opportunities

This is how countries like Germany, Switzerland, and South Korea built world-class mid-skill workforces.

Again: none of this can be produced by online-only training.

The Structural Flaw in Sanyal’s Bypass Narrative

Sanyal is right that:

universities are outdated

India’s demographic dividend is shrinking

college quality must be fixed urgently

AI offers an unprecedented skilling opportunity

But the conclusion he gestures towards — that India will increasingly rely on online-trained workers — is a linear, individualistic, Silicon Valley-style expectation that does not match India’s development needs.

The future of work in India will not be shaped by millions of self-taught, disaggregated learners.

It will be shaped by ecosystem-level reform, where universities act as:

skill hubs

research hubs

governance partners

industry integrators

DeepTech anchors

development laboratories

Online training is supplemental — not structural.

System redesign beats system bypass.

The Path Forward: Broad-Based Collaboration, Not Sensational Nihilism

India does not need fewer universities.

India needs universities that do everything they currently do — and much more.

The choice is not between:

traditional colleges  vs  online skilling platforms 

The real choice is between:

outdated universities  vs  universities redesigned as engines of national capability

A modern university is not a place where just lectures are delivered. It is a node in a country's technological, industrial, economic, and social progress.

And India cannot afford to weaken this institution — especially now.