Are industry-academia collaborations practical partnerships or a romantic dream?

Few topics in higher education receive as much attention as industry-academia collaboration. Every policy document, accreditation framework, and university strategy seems to ask the same question: What must universities do differently to become more relevant to industry?While it is an important question, I increasingly wonder whether we have been asking the wrong one. Over the years, we have created an idealised picture of university-industry collaboration. Every student should complete a meaningful internship. Every professor should work on industry-sponsored research. Universities and companies should jointly develop products, technologies, and services. Graduates should seamlessly transition into employment. It is an inspiring vision, but is it practical?According to the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), India produces approximately one crore graduates every year. But the country generates only about 10 to 15 lakh entry-level graduate jobs annually. The economy, undoubtedly, creates many more jobs, but relatively few are high-skilled positions requiring a university degree.This mismatch fundamentally changes the discussion. Even if every company genuinely wanted to collaborate with universities, can industry realistically provide quality internships for millions of students every year? Can companies dedicate engineers, managers, scientists, and designers to mentor such numbers? Can every faculty member undertake industry-funded research? Can every university sustain advanced laboratories capable of supporting collaborative product development?Capacity mattersMeaningful collaboration depends on several important preconditions. Students must possess sufficient technical competence before entering the industry. Companies must have the organisational bandwidth to supervise interns and collaborative projects. Faculty members must be engaged in high-quality research that industry finds valuable. Universities must possess research infrastructure, labs, and administrative systems capable of supporting sustained partnerships.Internationally, countries such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, and several European nations have built stronger university-industry ecosystems that evolved through decades of sustained industrial development, strong research universities, and carefully designed public policies.Even the U.S., often regarded as the benchmark for innovation, does not achieve the universal model of industry-academia collaboration that many discussions implicitly assume. Outstanding partnerships are concentrated in particular universities, industries, and research-intensive institutions rather than being the norm across the entire higher education system.Questions to askPerhaps, then, the issue is not that universities are underperforming but that our expectations are unrealistic. This suggests that it is time to ask: What exactly are we trying to achieve? Is the primary objective employability, innovation, technology transfer, entrepreneurship, regional economic development, or workforce readiness? Different goals require different models of collaboration. A single framework cannot serve every discipline or institution.The second question is how we incentivise companies to collaborate with universities. Industry cannot be expected to collaborate simply because policymakers encourage it. Companies invest time and resources when they perceive clear value, whether through access to talent, cutting-edge research, intellectual property, or long-term competitiveness.Finally, the most practical question of all: if deep industry collaboration cannot realistically reach every student, how should universities prepare graduates for successful careers? Perhaps the answer lies less in attempting to replicate industry inside the university and more in developing graduates who can learn quickly after entering the workforce.The future belongs to graduates who possess strong analytical ability, excellent communication skills, teamwork, intellectual humility, ethical judgement, and the capacity for lifelong learning. Technical knowledge will matter, but the ability to continuously acquire new knowledge may matter even more. Industry-academia collaboration should certainly be expanded wherever it creates genuine value. It remains indispensable for research-intensive universities, innovation ecosystems, and technology-driven sectors. However, it should not become the sole measure of educational quality or institutional success.The future of higher education will depend not merely on increasing the quantity of collaboration between universities and industry, but on designing models that are realistic, scalable, and aligned with the needs of both. Perhaps the time has come to stop asking how universities can become more like industry and, instead, ask a more fundamental question: What kind of graduates does society need, and what is the most practical way to prepare them?Views expressed are personal.The writer is Vice Chancellor, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology.