Galgotias University and the Robotic Race for Productive Research

It is a revealing symptom of the world we inhabit today that universities are chasing products over concepts. If the humanities are irrelevant and the social sciences subversive, deep research in the natural sciences is now being shoved aside in favour of quickly patentable and monetisable products. Research in science, in other words, must give way to research in technology. I’m no scientist, but the disavowal of the deep and often-unpredictable connections between the two feels alarming even to me – to say nothing of the sheer beauty of the abstract intricacies of deeply theoretical branches of science such as physics and mathematics that is no less moving than poetry or philosophy.

In recent times, the most well-thought out and sustainable model of product-oriented research may be the introduction of the “practical PhD” in China. Since September 2025, according to Nature magazine, at least 11 such degrees, all in engineering, have been awarded in Chinese universities. They include steel-made blocks that fit together to shape a bridge pylon, new welding techniques, and marine fire-fighting systems. So far the practical PhDs are limited to engineering, but it’s worth seeing if this model expands to the natural sciences and beyond. What may this mean in the Indian context? A cogently argued article by Kishore Paknikar argues for reflection over quick imitation and makes a case for a broadening of the PhD model rather than the abandonment of its theoretical trajectory. This would help include doctoral tracks linked to particular projects and industry needs as well as professional doctorates in applied domains. All of these, the writer is careful to emphasise, should co-exist with fundamental research, as it indeed China has continued to maintain. 

It is now no secret that China has already outpaced the US in science and technology research and is particularly well-positioned to be the world leader in the innovations of Artificial Intelligence. Chinese universities have done significant work in the humanities and the social sciences as well, but true excellence in these fields require many freedoms – intellectual, political, as well as freedom from the immediacy of instrumental and utilitarian application. Historically these freedoms have existed in far more capacious ways in the US, and they still do, though the chainsaw massacre of the American university system under the current regime has left gaping questions about how long they will remain alive. The existing, albeit receding difference in research culture across disciplines between the two world powers works well with an interesting new argument about China being an engineering state and the US being a lawyerly state. 

But notwithstanding the nightmare of the current regime in the US, one of the most upsetting assault on the values of fundamental knowledge to prioritise monetisable research was not engineered by this government. I’m thinking of the significant diversion of resources recently led by the University of Chicago to start-up ventures and the quick financialisation of applied research. Coming from a university known for deep research in the fundamental arts and sciences and possessing world-renowned humanities programmes, this was both surprising and unexpected. Not that this is not doable – I saw it done rather cannily during the nine years I taught at Stanford. But we all now know that this did not go well for Chicago, which incurred significant financial losses, with, its humanities and languages programmes suffering the most devastating cuts in consequence.

In India, on other hand, the disconnect between academia and industry has been rather glaring, certainly compared to what the US and now China has made possible. The IITs play a far greater role in the industrial and corporate world through their elite alumni network than through research coming out of their labs. The start-up culture in Bengaluru or Gurugram have little to do with universities or research institutions in their vicinity – unlike the deep and continuing connections between Stanford and Silicon Valley that created Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo and Google – or for that matter, between MIT and the Route 128 corridor of industrial innovation in the Boston-Cambridge area.

The anxiety for quick relevance that speaks to both profit and cultural pride, coming from a private university, exposes the weak foundations of private university culture in India – particularly when the lines between philanthropy and profit are perilously blurred. The recent incident of a faculty member of Galgotias University “claiming” a Chinese-made robotic dog as designed by the university’s Centre for Excellence may have given the internet an endless fountain of memes and a spray of shameful laughter. But the dead-serious and depressing revelation of this embarrassing gaffe is the imagination of the university as a for-profit shop. Given the quality we are talking about here, most of these ‘profits’ are still aspirational, or worse still, contingent on the duping of anxious and credulous students and families. But it hurts me greatly to say that in the country we now have, there is no promise that the impact will be salutary if and when the quality reaches real potential. When it comes to health and education, ‘profit’ is a dangerous thing – necessary as it may be in circumstances.

It is both revealing and ironic that the race for research products has reached its maddest intensity around artificial intelligence. For the world and the planet – and most pointedly for a country like India, research and education around AI needs to divert attention from the blinkered quest from the most advanced ‘product’ and look more widely around for the humanity and the socio-political reality of sustainable AI. Academics Arvind Narayanan and Akash Kapur have offered some necessary caveats for India, suggesting focus on enabling infrastructure, governance and citizen-friendly innovation over frontier models or the vanity of greater data centres. AI seems to be on an unstoppable trajectory – according to OpenAI’s Sam Altman, the rudimentary forms of artificial superintelligence to exceed all human ability may be here as early as 2028. There doesn’t seem to be much we can do on the technology front, where AI seems to already have taken charge of its own arc. But there is plenty, plenty that we can still do on the human and socio-political front – from addressing AI-enacted wealth and inequity, political and social representation in image and language, and the tender, vulnerable spaces of intimacy and relationships. These are the spaces where we should focus our education. Not on making claims about the most advanced robots, and more laughably, faking them.   

Saikat Majumdar’s work on higher education includes College: Pathways of Possibility (2018) and the forthcoming Open Intelligence: Education between Art and Artificial (2026).

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