At Rishihood University, Sonipat, education is viewed as more than the acquisition of knowledge; it focuses on personal development, professional competence, and public impact. In an exclusive interview with Vidushi Gupta, Reporter, APAC Media, Prof. (Dr.) Shobhit Mathur, Vice Chancellor, Rishihood University, discusses how the institution seeks to shape students through relationships, responsibilities and communities, while preparing them for professional and social impact.Â
AI is changing the way students learn and work. How do you think universities should
adapt their courses and teaching methods?
Universities need to begin with a difficult recognition: AI is not merely another technology to
be added to the curriculum. It changes what is worth teaching in the first place. If AI can
explain a concept, write routine code, summarise a book or produce a reasonable first draft
within seconds, universities cannot continue to organise education primarily around
information delivery. The classroom must increasingly become a place for discussion,
experimentation, building and problem-solving. Faculty will have to move from being
primarily transmitters of knowledge to mentors, critics and designers of learning experiences.
At the same time, disciplinary depth becomes even more important because meaningful use
of AI requires the ability to judge whether its output is correct, relevant and insightful.
Universities therefore need to combine strong foundations with much more project-based,
interdisciplinary and experiential learning.
With students now able to use AI to write, code and complete assignments, do you
think the way universities conduct exams and assessments needs to change?
Absolutely. Much of our assessment system was designed for an era in which producing the
answer was evidence that you possessed the knowledge. AI has broken that assumption. If
an assignment can be completed by entering a prompt into an AI system, it is no longer a
very useful assessment of the learner. We need to move towards assessments that test
understanding, judgement and application. This could include oral examinations, live
problem-solving, project demonstrations, fieldwork, portfolios and defending one’s reasoning before a faculty member or peer group.
Even written assignments can evolve by asking learners to critique AI-generated answers,
compare approaches, explain their decisions and improve imperfect solutions. The question
universities should increasingly ask is not simply, “Can you produce the answer?” but “Can
you think, build, defend and improve?”
How can universities encourage students to use AI effectively without becoming too
dependent on it?
We should neither ban AI nor allow it to become an intellectual crutch. Learners need to
understand that there is a difference between using AI to augment their capabilities and
outsourcing their thinking to it. Universities should deliberately teach both modes.
There are situations where learners should work without AI so that they develop foundational
capabilities in writing, mathematics, coding and reasoning. There are other situations where
they should be expected to use the best AI tools available and demonstrate how much more
they can accomplish with them. The principle I would emphasise is simple: use AI to expand
your capability, not to avoid developing capability. A learner who cannot think independently
will eventually struggle to judge the machine’s output.
What are the key AI and technology skills that students should develop to stay
relevant in the coming years?
I would distinguish between tools and capabilities. Particular AI tools will change rapidly, so
universities should not build curricula around today’s fashionable platforms. Learners need AI literacy: understanding how these systems work, their strengths and limitations, how to
interact with them effectively, how to verify their outputs, and how to use them responsibly.
Increasingly, they should also learn how to build with AI, using models, agents, data and
automation to solve real problems.
But some of the most valuable capabilities in an AI-rich world will actually be higher-order
human capabilities: problem formulation, systems thinking, communication, interdisciplinary
thinking, judgement and the ability to learn continuously. When intelligence becomes
inexpensive and widely available, the ability to identify the right problem and exercise good
judgement becomes disproportionately valuable.
As AI becomes a bigger part of education, how can universities maintain the
importance of human interaction, critical thinking and creativity?
AI actually gives universities an opportunity to recover some of what education was always
supposed to be. Industrial-era education pushed us towards large classrooms, standardised
curricula and examinations because these were efficient ways of educating at scale. If AI
can increasingly handle information delivery, routine practice and personalised tutoring,
human time can be redirected towards what humans do best: dialogue, mentorship,
collaboration, debate, creation and judgement.
Universities should therefore invest more, not less, in human interaction. Faculty should
spend more time challenging learners, assumptions, discussing difficult questions,
supervising projects and helping them develop intellectual and moral judgement. The
residential university also acquires renewed importance because education is not merely the
acquisition of knowledge. It is the formation of a person through relationships,
responsibilities, communities and lived experiences.
Rishihood University focuses on purpose, impact and problem-solving. How does this
approach help prepare students for a future shaped by AI?
At Rishihood, we increasingly believe that the university should function less like a collection
of classrooms and more like a community of builders. AI makes this transition even more
urgent. We want learners to encounter real problems, build solutions, work across
disciplines, take leadership responsibilities and understand the consequences of their
decisions.
Our emphasis on purpose is equally important because AI can dramatically increase a
person’s capability, but it cannot decide what that capability should ultimately serve. We
therefore think of education across three dimensions: personal development, professional
competence and public impact. The graduate who will thrive in the AI era is not simply
someone who knows how to use AI tools. It is someone with the curiosity to keep learning,
the agency to build and act, the judgement to make wise choices, and a sense of purpose
about where to direct these increasingly powerful capabilities.
