Opinion: Why India Must Rethink Its Higher Education Model

Walk into any engineering college in India and you will find students cramming for examinations that test memory rather than understanding. Visit a medical school and witness future doctors learning from textbooks that were outdated a decade ago. This is the uncomfortable reality of Indian higher education in 2026.

Despite the ambitious goals of the National Education Policy 2020, implementation has been painfully slow. The multidisciplinary approach it envisioned remains more aspiration than reality at most institutions. Meanwhile, countries like South Korea, Singapore, and even smaller economies like Estonia have leapfrogged ahead.

The numbers tell a stark story. According to recent surveys, only 45% of Indian engineering graduates are employable in their field of study. The figure is even lower for general degree holders. We are mass-producing degrees, not competence.

What India needs is not more institutions but better ones. We need faculty who are researchers, not just lecturers. We need curricula that evolve with industry needs. Most importantly, we need to abandon the colonial-era examination system that continues to define success by the ability to reproduce memorized answers.