Reboot or become a relic: The university as an operating system in urgent need of an update Premium
The Hindu
Explore how universities must adapt to AI-driven changes in education or risk becoming obsolete in today's learning landscape.
If you are an academic leader, imagine this scenario: your vice chancellor’s office gets an email from a first-year engineering student in rural Karnataka: “Respected Sir/Madam. I’ve been utilising an AI teacher on my phone that explains thermodynamics better than my lecturer, in Hindi, at 2 a.m. Why do I need to go to class?”
This isn’t a made-up dystopian situation. It’s occurring right now. In WhatsApp groups and hostel hallways, a good part of the 45 million learners in the Indian higher education system realise that their Android smartphones have smarter lecturers than many lecture halls. For college owners and State university officials, the ground is shifting, but not with a lot of noise. It’s only when enrolment numbers come out that the actual story comes out.
Today, AI isn’t a shiny new toy for top IITs. It’s the guest who wasn’t invited who is changing the reason a university today exists. How knowledge is transferred or transacted is changing! It goes faster with AI.
Learning that is tailored to you? Already ahead of your full classrooms.
Boring administrative work? Startups are automating things that your clerks have been arguing about for years.
Your university is like an operating system, which is more of a metaphor that cuts through the fog of legacy systems of 19 and 20th centuries. Today, your university or college controls the architecture of learning, just like an operating system manages apps, updates, and user flows in computing systems. This includes intellectual scaffolding, the social dynamics of classrooms and cohorts, and bureaucratic pipelines. But can archaic systems cope? In 2026, we all know that Windows XP will still boot. But good luck if you try running current software. Your curriculum transaction or pedagogy hasn’t changed since 2020? Same issue.
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Explore how universities must adapt to AI-driven changes in education or risk becoming obsolete in today's learning landscape.