By Dr Michael Spence
India, like the UK and countries around the world, is adding millions of graduates each year into a global labour market already grappling with employability gaps. The India Skills Report 2025 showed 54.81% of graduates are employable at industry standards, which is broadly in line with global trends. Yet AI continues disrupting and reshaping roles at speed.
For global universities, then, the pressing issue is how quickly they can help students combine deep expertise with the adaptability needed to thrive alongside AI.
History suggests that disruptive technologies rarely eliminate work outright, they reshape it, and AI is no exception. Rather than wipe out jobs, AI will transform the tasks within them, bringing a fundamental shift in the skills and mindsets graduates need to thrive. Across sectors, employers are integrating AI not just for routine processes previously taken on by entry-level positions, but increasingly for more analytical and creative tasks.
Against this backdrop, humans are being pushed up the value chain towards more complex, ambiguous, and high-stakes forms of work. Philosophy graduates are often valued in technology and innovation-driven sectors not because they possess specialist technical expertise, but because they are trained to interrogate assumptions and navigate complex problems.
Small differences in how well graduates can combine AI tools with human capabilities such as sound judgement, ethical reasoning, and the ability to collaborate effectively with experts from different fields could produce significant differences in outcomes. Two students may have access to the same technology, but the one who has learned to ask better questions, challenge assumptions and apply knowledge across different contexts is likely to create greater value and progress faster.
This moment is a decisive one for universities, who play a key role in preparing the next generation of global leaders. Rather than focusing narrowly on AI skills, universities should review how they help students develop the competencies that will enable them to thrive in an AI-enabled world. This includes strengthening core capabilities like critical thinking and the ability to ‘connect the dots’ across disciplines. These aptitudes have long been central to higher education, but AI is making them more valuable rather than less.
Most importantly, students need the confidence and resilience to experiment, fail, learn, and try again: a true entrepreneurial mindset that views failure as an intrinsic part of innovation. Universities can play an important role in cultivating this attitude, through entrepreneurship opportunities. UCL, for example, is home to The Hatchery incubator programme where students and recent graduates of any background and discipline can receive access to workshops, expert tailored advice and fully funded office space to help get their ideas off the ground.
Students will also need to quickly adapt to different ways of working. They must learn to engage constructively with competing viewpoints, to challenge ideas without diminishing people, to defend a position without defensiveness, and to remain open to being wrong with humility and in a culturally sensitive way. These are all essential skills for effective leadership in an increasingly complex world. With a flux of new hybrid roles, AI can complement, not substitute, the humans who can interpret, contextualise, and challenge its outputs.
The stakes for India are high. The country has a large and young graduate population entering an increasingly competitive and unequal labour market. But it also enjoys a position of great strength, having the second-largest AI talent pool globally that supplies nearly 16% of the world’s AI workforce pipeline.
We are moving from a front-loaded education before entering the job market, to one of lifelong learning and continuous reskilling. It’s more important than ever for universities to maintain an open dialogue with employers and professional bodies, to ensure curricula continue to develop the skills graduates need. Those who only upgrade what they teach, rather than how they teach, will struggle to remain relevant. Close partnerships across borders, such as those between India and the UK, can accelerate research, talent development and innovation while ensuring AI delivers broad societal benefit rather than widening inequalities.
They must remain as institutions where different disciplines and viewpoints meet and thrive, rather than operating in departmental silos. As AI pioneers such as Google DeepMind began life at a university, so too are tomorrow’s technologies currently being built on campuses worldwide. The more we can invest in core knowledge, commercialisation and application, the more transformative universities can be in expanding the frontiers of innovation.
Careers today are increasingly non-linear and constantly evolving, so universities need to prepare students for uncertainty rather than stability, and help normalise reinvention.
We have a responsibility that extends beyond preparing students for their first job. Universities must create environments where curiosity and responsible risk-taking are rewarded alongside academic excellence, equipping students with the hallmarks of a ‘T-shaped’ education – that is, one that develops deep disciplinary knowledge alongside the ability to collaborate and work across broad range of disciplines. That means not only helping students succeed in today’s workforce, but empowering them to create the opportunities, industries and solutions of the future.
Dr Michael Spence is the President & Provost of University College London.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETEDUCATION does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETEDUCATION will not be responsible for any damage caused to any person or organisation directly or indirectly.
