Abstract: India’s higher-education system faces a structural mismatch that generative AI is set to widen. Enrolment reached about 4.33 crore in 2021-22, yet graduate unemployment runs at roughly four times the national rate, and the entry-level IT-services jobs that absorbed graduates for three decades are shrinking. This report examines which skills, degrees and disciplines will matter in India between 2026 and 2036. It draws on the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, the ILO’s generative AI exposure index, NITI Aayog’s roadmap for the AI economy, the Economic Survey 2025-26, AISHE, the India Skills Report 2026 and research from Stanford and the McKinsey Global Institute.
The analysis identifies five forces reshaping Indian work: AI’s erosion of entry-level roles, the rise of global capability centres, industrial policy in semiconductors and clean energy, an ageing population, and credential inflation. It proposes a five-layer skills stack and argues that curricula must shift from skills of production to skills of verification and judgement. Degrees that combine a domain anchored in physical, regulated or relational work with AI fluency will gain value: health sciences, electronics and VLSI, energy and climate, deep AI and cybersecurity, and re-tooled core engineering. Generic pass-course programmes and back-office-oriented degrees will contract, while computer science, management, law and accounting must transform. The report closes with concrete recommendations for institutions, regulators, students, parents and employers, including using the fourth year of the degree for apprenticeship and allocating seats by published outcome data, and sets out the uncertainties that could alter its forecast.
Read the full report here
