Higher education must reorient curriculum towards AI, EVs, and green technologies: Amitabh Kant

In this exclusive interaction with Shiksha.com, Amitabh Kant discusses the urgent need to align education with employability, foster innovation on campuses, and reimagine the future of learning in India.

Amitabh Kant, currently serving as the Chairperson (Chancellor) of NIIT University, Neemrana, is one of India’s most respected policy leaders. A 1980-batch IAS officer, Kant has played a pivotal role in shaping India’s developmental and innovation agenda. He has served as G20 Sherpa for India, and earlier as CEO of NITI Aayog (2016-2022), where he led landmark initiatives such as Make in India, Startup India, Ease of Doing Business, the Aspirational Districts Programme, and the Atal Innovation Mission.

Known for his emphasis on data-driven governance, entrepreneurship, and technological transformation, Kant has now turned his attention to the education sector in his new role at NIIT University. In this exclusive interaction with Abhay Anand, he discusses the urgent need to align education with employability, foster innovation on campuses, and reimagine the future of learning in India.

Q: India has witnessed rapid growth in educational institutions, yet employability remains a concern. What needs to be done through the National Education Policy (NEP) to bridge the gap between skill and degree?

Amitabh Kant: It is a very important question, one which brings out the significance and importance of the new education policy. What the policy says is that we need to reorient our curriculum for skills and we need to reorient and restructure the course content for the work that we have to do in today's world. And therefore, if you look at the world around us, it is radically transforming, there is new technology, there is artificial intelligence, there is robots, there is drones, there is a world of young startups who are disrupting the world.

They require jobs of data scientists, machine learners, they require analysts, there is a shortage of those jobs, there is no skilled manpower available, whereas we are teaching the traditional engineering courses, we are teaching traditional science courses. People who are studying them and are not finding employment in the market and these people then have to go do a reorientation course, which is a six months or a one year course and therefore, my view is that higher learning institutions have to reorient and restructure the curriculum for the requirement of today. It has to be more based on data, more based on machine learning, more based on artificial intelligence.

We need courses for electric vehicles, we need courses for robots, we need courses for drones, we need courses for green hydrogen. These are new areas of disruption. If India is to technologically leapfrog, then you need a lot of trained manpower and these trained manpower should enable India to move forward.

Q: You have often spoken about entrepreneurship and innovation. How can these be brought into the curriculum of higher education institutions, especially for those beyond the IITs?

Amitabh Kant: So my strong belief is that we should allow students coming in in the first year itself to start tinkering, start finding solutions to many of the problems that we have, so that we have an inquisitive mindset, we are here to solve problems. Secondly, we need to create many more incubators around, we need to create a start-up movement in all engineering colleges.

Thirdly, when students start new start-ups, we should permit actually professors to guide them, become a part of that start-up, take equity in that start-up and thirdly for them to be able to get funding, we should be able to find a source of fund, where venture capital, private equity can all invest in the start-ups.

Actually the challenge is to create a very innovative culture which will come from curriculum alteration, changing the curriculum, creating an inquisitive mindset, so that these young students are not looking for jobs, they are looking to disrupt, they are looking to do start-ups and that would require us a new culture of education where innovation becomes key, entrepreneurship becomes key, so when they become entrepreneurs, we should be able to support and finance them.

Q: When it comes to curriculum changes, regulatory frameworks often pose challenges. Since education is a concurrent subject, what needs to be done at the state level, especially for state universities?

Amitabh Kant: I think we should give increasing level of freedom and flexibility to the universities and treat many of the colleges which are linked to the universities also as universities, give the freedom to the university to innovate course content, to create, become more innovative bodies, everything should not be controlled only by the universities, give freedom to the colleges also, that will enable them to become more and more flexible, more and more innovative in the content.

Q: You have led major national initiatives like Startup India and Make in India. What should young civil servants focus on when they join the services today?

Amitabh Kant: So first of all, they should always be positive and optimistic, they should look to the future, but third thing which is not possible during my time, today it is possible to use the power of data, if you want to do good governance, look at the power of data, use the data on a real time basis to analyze, examine, start making various blocks within your district, compete with each other, define your outcomes, what you want to achieve in terms of education, what you want to achieve in terms of health, what you want to achieve in terms of nutrition, define those outcomes wherever you are, whether you are in the subdivision or district, work towards that, good governance is the key, good governance comes from data, it comes from analysis and then putting out that analysis in public domain.

Q: A lot of foreign universities are now coming to India. Is this a threat to Indian private universities, or will it enhance competition and quality?

Amitabh Kant: No, it is a good thing that instead of our students going abroad, we send out a lot of our students abroad, let foreign universities come here and set up good campuses, there is no threat to any university as long as private universities do well, they set up top class universities, they will do very well and our objective should be to create a great competition and the best, we will all learn from each other as we go along and I think we will benefit, many foreign universities when they come here, we will learn from NIIT and Neemrana and Neemrana will learn from many of the best universities across the world.

Q: Lastly, what advice would you give to young Indians entering the workforce today in terms of mindset and adaptability?

Amitabh Kant: I would only suggest that do relentless hard work, do hard work, all these countries, Japan, China, Korea were all made by hard work, secondly whatever you do, use technology, technology will distinguish you from others, technology will enable you to grow and progress and thirdly always, always look at finding a solution to several problems.

What are the challenges before us? If there is a challenge of waste, is there a challenge of water supply, is there a challenge of improving learning outcomes, is there a challenge of improving health outcomes, whatever are the challenges around us, we should use technology to find a solution to those challenges. Many of these challenges could not be solved quickly and fast earlier but today using data, using artificial intelligence is possible to find a quick solution.