The Rising Importance of Tertiary Education in India

For decades, a college degree in India meant a straightforward promise: study for three or four years, pick up a certificate, and step into a stable job. That promise is getting harder to keep. Automation, artificial intelligence, and constantly shifting industry demands mean the skills employers want today may look outdated in five years. This is exactly why tertiary education, everything beyond school that leads to a diploma, degree, or postgraduate qualification, has moved from being a nice-to-have to a national priority.

Why tertiary education matters more than ever 🔗

Work itself is changing shape. Routine, repetitive tasks are increasingly handled by machines and software, while the tasks that remain distinctly human, problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and adaptability, are growing in demand. A joint report by the ILO and OECD prepared for the G20 Employment Working Group notes that digital transformation, globalisation, and demographic shifts are reshaping the tasks carried out at work, pushing up demand for high-level cognitive and social skills even as jobs with heavy routine content disappear.

This shift puts tertiary education institutions, universities, colleges, and technical institutes, in a very different role than before. They are no longer just certifying subject knowledge. They are expected to build the kind of higher-order thinking that lets a graduate learn a new tool, adapt to a new role, or pivot industries entirely.

The higher-order skills employers want 🔗

Higher-order cognitive skills include the ability to analyse unfamiliar problems, synthesise information from multiple sources, communicate complex ideas simply, and work in teams across disciplines. These are hard to teach through rote memorisation and textbook-based exams, which is precisely the model much of Indian tertiary education has historically followed. The mismatch between what is taught and what the job market actually needs has been a long-standing concern for policymakers and employers alike.

India’s tertiary education system: scale without full strength 🔗

India’s tertiary education system is enormous by any measure. It is often described as the second largest in the world by student numbers, trailing only China, and it continues to expand every year. According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), the Gross Enrolment Ratio, which measures the share of the 18-23 age group enrolled in higher education, rose from 23.7 in 2014-15 to 30 in 2023-24, with female enrolment now slightly ahead of male enrolment at 31.2.

Scale alone, though, is not the same as quality or relevance. India is home to a large pool of engineering, science, and management graduates, and institutions across the country are expected to make students industry-ready through hands-on, research-based learning rather than purely theoretical instruction. Yet a persistent gap remains between the volume of graduates produced and the number who are genuinely equipped for evolving job roles.

Where the system needs reform 🔗

Three structural issues stand out when experts discuss Indian tertiary education. First, rigidity: students who choose a stream in Class 11 or their first year of college often find it nearly impossible to switch disciplines later without losing academic credits or years. Second, an underemphasis on skill-building: many degree programmes remain heavy on theory and light on internships, live projects, or industry exposure. Third, weak innovation infrastructure: research output from Indian universities, outside a handful of top institutions, remains limited compared to the country’s size and talent pool.

The cost of rigid degree structures 🔗

A student who realises midway through a B.Com programme that they are more interested in data analytics than accounting has historically had few good options, drop out, start over, or push through a degree that no longer excites them. This inflexibility discourages exploration and, in many cases, pushes capable students toward disengagement rather than deeper learning.

NEP 2020: the reform blueprint 🔗

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was designed specifically to address these gaps. On flexibility, it introduces multiple entry and exit points in undergraduate programmes, so a student can leave after one year with a certificate, after two with a diploma, or complete a full degree, without losing accumulated academic credit. A national credit framework now allows students to transfer credits earned through online courses on platforms like SWAYAM toward their formal degree, which builds real flexibility into what used to be a rigid, linear system.

On institutional reform, the policy envisions large multidisciplinary higher education institutions in or near every district by 2030, with a target of lifting the Gross Enrolment Ratio to 50 percent by 2035. Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities, or MERUs, are being set up to offer the kind of broad, flexible education that top institutes like the IITs and IIMs are known for, but at a wider scale. Single-stream colleges are meant to gradually phase out in favour of institutions where a commerce student can, for instance, take electives in computer science or public policy without switching universities.

Research parks: bridging classrooms and industry 🔗

Flexibility solves one part of the problem. The other is innovation, and this is where research parks on IIT campuses have become an important experiment. These parks are physical and institutional spaces where faculty, students, startups, and established companies work on shared research and development projects, often under the same roof as the university.

The IIT Madras Research Park, set up in 2010 as India’s first university-based research park, brings together IIT faculty expertise, industry professionals, and shared infrastructure so that academic research can move faster toward real products and services rather than staying confined to journals and lab reports. Companies set up dedicated R&D centres within the park, collaborate with faculty on joint projects, and in the process, get early access to student talent while the university gets funding and real-world problems to work on. Similar research parks now operate at IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Guwahati, IIT Gandhinagar, and IIT Jodhpur, each built around the same core idea: academia is a source of knowledge, and industry knows how to convert that knowledge into something usable.

Why this model matters beyond engineering 🔗

Research parks are often associated with deep-tech and engineering innovation, but the underlying model, close, sustained collaboration between classrooms and industry, is exactly what commerce and management education needs too. Case-based learning, live consulting projects, and industry-linked electives all borrow from the same logic: theory becomes useful only when it is tested against real problems.

What this means for commerce and business students 🔗

For a B.Com student, these reforms are not abstract policy discussions. A more flexible tertiary system means the option to combine a commerce degree with electives in data analytics, digital marketing, or entrepreneurship without switching institutions. A stronger research and innovation culture means more internships, live industry projects, and startup incubation opportunities even outside engineering campuses. And an economy that increasingly values higher-order cognitive skills means that how well a student can analyse a balance sheet, question an assumption, or adapt to new accounting software will matter more than how much they can memorise before an exam.

The direction of reform is clear even if execution varies widely across institutions. Students who actively seek out interdisciplinary electives, internships, and skill-based certifications, rather than waiting for their college to hand these to them, are likely to be better positioned as India’s tertiary education system continues to evolve.

What do you think? If your college offered more flexibility to mix commerce with subjects like technology or public policy, would you take that option? And do you think research-park-style industry collaboration could work for business and commerce education the way it has for engineering?

References

1. https://epale.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/wcms_646038.pdf
2. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2282525&reg=48&lang=1
3. https://www.studyinindia.gov.in/indian-higher-education
4. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?ModuleId=3&NoteId=154950&reg=3&lang=2
5. https://technology.nirmauni.ac.in/new-education-policy-2020-highlights-key-takeaways-for-higher-education/
6. https://www.iitm.ac.in/research-park/iitm-research-park