Degree in one hand, AI course in the other: College students aren’t waiting for classrooms to catch up with jobs

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The shift is visible on both sides of the market: students are independently enrolling in courses, while higher education institutions are partnering with edtech companies to provide industry-oriented learning.

"Till some time ago, in any college that had a few hundred students graduating, 70% of the jobs were in IT services and BPOs (business process outsourcing units). That is drying up," he said, adding that at the same time, an increasing number of AI-linked roles-spanning coding, marketing, analytics and data-are opening up across sectors.

The majority of the demand is coming from self-funded learners. At Simplilearn, 90% of student learners sign up on their own, and the company has seen a 50% year-on-year increase in student enrolments since launching its AI Accelerator programme about six months ago.

On the business-to-business side, the emphasis is shifting from standalone certificates to curriculum integration, practical projects and industry-led programmes. Coursera, which has more than 120 campus partners in India, said around one million learners in the country benefit from its for Campus certifications, accounting for at least three million enrolments. It has also trained more than 100,000 faculty members in the country.

"Industry requirements are changing rapidly as AI transforms sectors, making it difficult for traditional four-year curricula to keep pace. Universities need to bring in micro-credentials and technology-enabled learning to update their curricula and ensure students graduate with the practical, real-time skills that employers are looking for, rather than just theoretical knowledge," said Prashasti Rastogi, director - Coursera for Campus and Coursera for Government, India.

UpGrad is seeing a similar shift toward AI-first learning. Its Skill Shift 2026 study found that students and early-career individuals learn AI primarily from YouTube (51%), personal experimentation (48%) and social media (47%). In contrast, only 25% learn it from their college or university, and just 15% do so through structured courses. Their biggest struggles stem directly from this informal approach: 45% of respondents struggle to choose among too many tools, 37% cannot keep up with the rapid pace of change and 27% find it difficult to distinguish real value from hype.

"Demand is being driven by students looking for a trusted, structured path through the noise - and employability sits underneath all of it. They know it's an AI-first world and they want to be ready for it," said Anuj Vishwakarma, CEO of upGrad, higher education.

The strongest fields of interest are AI, machine learning and data, alongside management, finance and marketing. “The more important signal is the shift from awareness to application - students don’t just want to understand AI, they want to build with it,” said Vishwakarma.

The common driver across platforms is the widening gap between the pace of change in industry and the pace at which traditional university curricula can adapt. “The edtech-university relationship has fundamentally shifted; unlike reach earlier, we have moved to relevance,” said Avnish Singhal, head of consumer business, India, APAC and Middle East, and India Campus Initiative, Emeritus.

Three out of four enrolments across the company’s business-to-consumer portfolio now come from AI and technology courses, according to Singhal, while it has more than 90 university partnerships globally.

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