India’s higher education system is facing a test it did not set. Rajesh Nambiar, president of Nasscom, India’s industry body for technology companies, told Nikkei Asia that recent graduates could struggle to land technology jobs as companies automate entry-level coding and software testing with AI. The warning puts AI in higher education at the centre of a debate about what a degree is worth. Nambiar said students risk leaving college with skills that may be obsolete unless the curriculum changes quickly.
“From a fresher’s point of view, it is a concern, (and) I will not sugarcoat it any differently,” Nambiar said, as reported by India Today. “If our education system is unable to make that transition very quickly, students will come out with skill sets which may be very obsolete already.” He added that the curriculum change required has never been this significant. His comments were made in an interview published on 6 November, and they put AI in higher education under fresh scrutiny.
AI in higher education faces an entry-level squeeze
The squeeze on AI in higher education is at the entry point. Basic coding and software testing, the tasks that have traditionally given engineering graduates their first jobs, are the ones being automated first. Nambiar called the current phase a period of rebalancing, lasting until new AI-related work makes up for revenue lost from older services. He named cybersecurity, AI consulting and AI implementation as the areas companies need to move into.
The numbers behind the warning are stark. India had 5,903 engineering and technology colleges in the financial year ending March 2026, with enrolments close to 2.6 million, according to official estimates cited by India Today. Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2026 projects direct tech-sector employment at about 6 million in 2025-26, a net addition of 135,000 people. Azim Premji University estimates that the number of unemployed graduates rose nearly fourfold, to about 11 million, between 2004 and 2023.
The degree premium has been thinning for years. The State of Working India 2026 report from Azim Premji University found that the wage premium degree holders enjoyed over those with only a school-leaving certificate peaked in 2011 and has faltered since. Only about one-third of India’s five million annual graduates secure salaried positions, and unemployment among graduates aged 15 to 25 stands near 40%. That is the backdrop against which AI in higher education is now judged.
What AI in higher education must change
Nambiar called for a major overhaul of the computer science and engineering curriculum. The change AI in higher education needs is not a new module added to an old course. It is a shift in what students are taught to do: prompt AI models, check their output, and finish work machines cannot complete alone. Livemint reported in October that employers now test freshers on framing a problem, debugging outputs, and verifying what an AI tool produces. Shantanu Rooj of TeamLease EdTech told the paper that the gap today is an application gap rather than simply a knowledge gap.
Kumar Rajagopalan of Dexian gave freshers a direct warning in the same report: candidates should prove they comprehend the logic behind the code instead of reproducing AI-generated outputs blindly. The message from hiring managers is consistent. A degree still opens the door, but interviews now check whether the graduate can work with AI rather than lean on it. Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran has argued that the promise of conventional degrees is waning and that India should place greater emphasis on vocational and trade skills less open to automation.
AI in higher education and the jobs maths
The industry’s own figures show why the adjustment in AI in higher education is hard. Nasscom’s review expects the tech sector to cross $315 billion of revenue in 2025-26, and providers are moving from headcount-based billing to outcome-based contracts. Tata Consultancy Services reported sequential revenue growth of 0.5% in the July to September quarter, its weakest in three years, while annualised AI revenue rose 19% to $3.1 billion. Infosys cut its revenue growth forecast for the year ending March 2027 to 1-2%, even as its AI revenue grew 29% quarter on quarter.
What graduates can do now
The advice coming from the industry is practical rather than comforting. Graduates who can orchestrate AI systems, rather than simply write code, will command better pay, Nambiar said, while those trained only in traditional programming face a contracting job market. Colleges that teach students to use AI tools with judgement give their graduates something a machine cannot copy: proof that they understand the problem in front of them. The debate about AI in higher education will not be settled by one warning, but the numbers behind it suggest the system has less time than it thinks.