The Biggest Lie We Tell Our Children About College

The biggest lie we have managed to build in the last twenty years is that universities are placement factories. In every Indian living room, education is discussed in the same breath as sizes of packages, campus placements and ROIs. Funny thing, is we are trying to force education into an Excel sheet. To amplify the absurdity of it let me draw an analogy.

Imagine entering a restaurant where someone else decides what you will eat. You never see the menu, or get to choose the dishes. You simply consume whatever is placed before you. Would you enjoy that meal?

Probably not. But that’s exactly how many students build careers!

The curriculum decides what they learn. The college decides whom they meet. The placement office decides where they interview. The recruiter decides their first job.

And what does the student do? The student simply waits.

Waiting has become a career strategy. And that should worry all of us.

The world has changed. Unfortunately, our mindsets continue to be an extension of the colonial mindset: an endorsed degree on paper is equal to a secured job.

In the meantime, AI has rewritten the rules. Today, a twenty-year-old can traverse far more in shorter time. Using AI, he can build a financial model, create marketing campaigns, write software, analyse customer behaviour, build presentations edit videos, research industries, launch business, design products. In short, he can solve problems faster by learning faster with AI.

Let this sink in, the winners of tomorrow will not be those who possess degrees but those who know how to learn faster than everyone else.

Let me reiterate this with a recent anecdote that unfolded in my counselling chamber.

Two bright students with impressive grades walked in. Both wanted to study business; were considering similar universities; and dreamt of successful corporate careers. I began with a simple question, “What exactly do you want to do?”. The first replied,” I want to work in finance.”

“What kind of finance?” was my next question. He was silent. The second smiled confidently, “I want to do business.” What role, I asked. Marketing, operations, consulting, sales, entrepreneurship, product management? Another silence. I followed it up with simpler questions.

“Have either of you spoken to ten professionals doing the job you dream about?”

“No.”

Read annual reports? Interviewed founders? Shadowed a CFO? Attended industry conferences?

To each their response was a ‘no’ that turned uncomfortable.

It was sad to observe that in this day, their career planning had happened inside living rooms. And not inside industry.

That is becoming our biggest educational challenge. We have confused information with preparation. Students can rattle off university rankings, acceptance rates, scholarships, campus life.

And yet many have never examined a company’s annual report, spoken to recruiters, analysed job descriptions. They have never understood what employers actually expect.

Ironically, students spend years preparing to enter college but are never prepared to leave it.

What we have to understand from the employer’s perspective is that when he hires a BCom graduate he isn’t hired for the BCom. Instead, the employer hires a financial analyst, auditor, taxation specialist or a valuation professional. Degrees don't create careers. Professional identity does.

Similarly, A BBA graduate is hired as recruit marketers, supply chain professionals, sales managers, operations specialists, business analysts etc.

From both illustrations, the answer is simple, the degree opens the first door but it is skills that determine every door after that.

So, when parents ask me about packages after graduation, I ask them a simple question, “what value will your child build from Day One?

It may be ruthless but it is the truth. And we should begin this kind of conversation instead of projections from university rankings et al. We forget the scheme of things: salary is the outcome of value creation. We seem to be chasing our dreams from the other end.

In my twenty years of working with students, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and universities, I have learnt one life lesson. Education is not about buying certainty. Education is about building capabilities because capability creates confidence; confidence creates opportunity; and opportunity creates careers.

In my next article, I will explain why so many students, especially from top universities abroad with degrees in business, economics, engineering, psychology and Liberal Arts etc, graduate with more skills be it interpersonal or technical, and why they are better equipped to enter career paths than someone being spoon fed in India. I will take you through how families can help build what I call a Career Architecture from the very first semester.

Let’s remember, the biggest risk today is not choosing the wrong university abroad or in India. It is graduating without knowing who you are becoming.

This article was originally published by The Economic Times on 18th August 2026

Harvard’s AI-tutoring experiment produced a significant result: students learned more in less time than under a strong active-learning comparison. But the study does not validate every chatbot being sold as an “AI tutor.” It raises a more consequential question about what schools should demand before putting AI between a student and the learning process.