Kamal Ghorui
Zahraa Ilyas, a Bachelor of Commerce student at Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru, got placed with investment banker Goldman Sachs in July last year. Placements happen throughout the final year and she’s finishing her programme only this year. Zahraa’s is not a small feat if anxious conversations on vanishing entry-level jobs are to be taken seriously. While artificial intelligence has been around for a while, much has changed since the generative kind of intelligence dropped three years ago, overwhelming every topic with a “top line and bottom line”.It is not only changing how work gets done, but also shaping hiring decisions — especially for fresh recruits. What has changed is that the training runway for fresh graduates has reduced significantly, says Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno, a Bengaluru-based specialist staffing company.The net result is something too demanding. “Companies want ‘ready-to-eat’ graduates — hire today, deploy tomorrow,” says S Sadagopan, founder and former director of IIIT-Bangalore. Recruiters today ask extensively about projects, industry certifications, skill-based credentials and hands-on experience, says Lt Gen M D Venkatesh, vice chancellor of Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE). “Students who have completed these programmes are generally more confident in interviews and handle technical and problem-solving questions better,” he says.A new kind of rat raceMany colleges in Karnataka, long a magnet for students from across the country and beyond, are quick to realise what they are up against — the traditional degree alone won’t cut it. “AI is now a key basic skill for most of the roles companies are asking for. Companies always look for some specific skills, but they do not mention as much. When there are two good candidates, they pick the one who is more fluent with AI tech and tools,” says Asghar Ahmed, dean for training and placement at Mount Carmel. Before the recruitment, Zahraa underwent 15 days of rigorous training that covered both aptitude and soft skills. “When I realised that Goldman Sachs was coming for campus recruitment, I reached out to the trainers to understand how to prepare,” she says. Mount Carmel’s training module includes algorithmic thinking, critical thinking, problem-solving, AI tools and Microsoft Excel.Skilling is now the last strawIf upskilling was merely fashionable and a resume add-on until the pandemic, it has now become the last straw. For example, after the pandemic, Christ Deemed-to-be University introduced a ‘digital policy’. Drawn up especially for the School of Commerce, it trains every student in AI baseline requirements, with a specific focus on agentic AI, and tools like Visual Basic code, Python, LLMs etc. “These extra courses are the ones which are going to define students’ prospects, not the regular conventional kind of programmes,” says Biju Toms, director of the School of Commerce. “Earlier, we used to say that classroom learning is the key and the faculty was considered sage on stage. All those things are gone. What is important today is how do you supplement it? Most universities make the mistake of giving just theoretical exposure. What students need is hands-on training,” he says. Biju says corporates have become highly demanding. “Earlier, they used to hire in large numbers. Now, many of them are cutting down on numbers. Though companies are not looking at a fully trained AI/ML candidate, when the hiring happens, students with tech exposure enjoy a clear advantage.”Anil P, placement officer at St. Joseph’s University in Bengaluru, says the industry is constantly giving a heads-up on what they expect from fresh grads. For example, companies now expect students of both pure sciences and humanities subjects to know MS Office and Excel. “It used to be that only commerce graduates were familiar with these tools. Now that has changed. So, we wove that into our skill-based training programme for all students,” he says.‘Nature of jobs change every 5 yrs’The National Institute of Technology-Karnataka (NITK) in Surathkal, Dakshina Kannada district, is in constant touch with industry partners and alumni to understand the nature of changes happening to technology at light-speed. “The nature of jobs will change significantly every 5 years, making even new curricula obsolete by the time students graduate,” says Prof B Ravi, director of NIT Karnataka, Surathkal, and Institute Chair Professor at IIT Bombay. Industry partners and alumni are regularly involved in evaluating curricula and individual courses, suggesting improvements, delivering lectures, offering project topics and participating in evaluations. “As far as engineering graduates are concerned, what truly matters is the ability to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world situations, a quality increasingly favoured by companies during placements,” says Ravi.NITK, over the past two years, has been conducting multiple rounds of consultations, surveys and reviews involving faculty, alumni and industry stakeholders. These exercises, Ravi says, led to several key insights, including the need to reduce the overall credit load, introduce greater flexibility through electives, develop new minor programmes, and enable multiple career pathways spanning academia, industry and entrepreneurship. “Students recognise that top jobs go to those who can demonstrate skills, not merely academic knowledge. As a result, many are investing significant time in online learning, vacation internships and weekend freelancing. All such activities contributing to professional development must be formally integrated into the curriculum, academic calendar and weekly timetable,” he says.The rise of ‘add-on’ modulesManipal Academy of Higher Education says it hedges against headwinds by regularly reviewing its curriculum with inputs from academia, industry, and by looking at emerging developments. “What these initiatives do is add an extra layer, more hands-on work, greater exposure to real-life requirements and early familiarity with how things function in industry and other workplaces,” says Venkatesh, VC of Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE).He notes that many recent additions are being introduced outside the formal university syllabus, primarily due to the need for speed and flexibility. “Formal syllabus revisions take time. Add-on modules allow us to respond much faster. If something new emerges, we can introduce it quickly, modify it, or even discontinue it without disturbing the core academic structure,” he says.Venkatesh also points to a significant shift in higher education towards skill-based micro-credentials, which industries increasingly expect from entry-level employees. On graduate-level entry jobs, he said the university does not see this as a decline but as an adjustment to change. “Entry-level roles are evolving. By exposing students to a wider range of skills, we are opening up more possibilities—across internships, early career roles, startups, research and interdisciplinary areas—rather than pushing everyone into a single narrow pathway,” he says.MAHE has a dedicated Centre for Micro-Credentials at the university that helps faculty actively design, guide and oversee these initiatives, rather than merely implementing externally driven ideas. “Faculty can develop micro-credentials independently, in partnership with industry or industry experts or partner universities. The Govt of India and regulators such as AICTE are actively promoting these initiatives.“Hands tied for affiliated collegesAnanth Prabhu G, cybersecurity expert and a professor, points out that many colleges are unable to make timely changes to syllabus because of structural differences in India’s higher education system. “Colleges in Karnataka fall into 3 categories: affiliated, autonomous and deemed-to-be universities. In affiliated colleges, he notes, the university controls the syllabus, question papers and degree, while teachers only award internal marks. The college has virtually no say in shaping the programme,” he points out. “Autonomous colleges, on the other hand, have the freedom to design their own syllabus, though the degree is awarded by parent university. In the case of deemed universities, curriculum design, evaluation and degree certification are all handled internally,” Prabhu says.An AI divide is emergingAnanth Prabhu G, a cybersecurity expert and professor at Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management, Mangaluru, warns of a growing AI divide, similar to the digital divide of the past. “A few people know how to use AI effectively, while most do not understand how it works,” he says. AI education, he argues, must begin at the school level, especially since today’s students are digital natives. Parents, too, need awareness. Cybercrime, he says, became far more sophisticated, with criminals using AI to send flawless phishing emails. “Earlier, we told people to look for grammatical mistakes. Now you won’t find any,” he says. AI education should not be confined to computer science departments but integrated across commerce, law, humanities and management programmes. Despite widespread anxiety, Prabhu says placements have not yet seen a sharp decline. While minor fluctuations exist, companies continue to hire, largely because AI outputs are not 100% accurate, making human oversight essential. However, he cautions that a major shift is inevitable within the next 2 years, and that AI disruption will not be limited to engineering alone, but will affect commerce, management and all other disciplines.‘Fundamentals matter more than any tool’Whatever students study, they should study it well. That is the first and most important thing. They should not worry about tools. What AWS needs is not what Microsoft needs, and what an oil company needs is not what a hospital needs. Once they master their fundamentals, it takes only a few days or weeks to apply that knowledge to any specific domain. That is how they become productive and retain their jobs.Many students don’t have sufficient background. Machine learning and these AI tools come out of years of research in statistics, inference and neural networks. These are not new. They were developed in the 60s and 70s, but earlier we didn’t have the computational power. Today we do. That’s why students need time to build a solid foundation. Knowing a tool alone is never sufficient. If the tool becomes obsolete tomorrow and you know only the tool, then you also become obsolete. But if you know what is behind the tool, when the new one comes, you can still master it.Students must also learn the art of learning to learn because new tools will keep coming, and nobody will have the time to teach each one. They should always be open to new ideas. Something works in one domain, something else works in another, so they should not get attached to one tool. With strong fundamentals and the ability to learn continuously, they can handle any change. AI will not replace people — with the right grounding, people can actually do much better with AI in the loop.—S Sadagopan, founder-director, IIIT-B
