Aug 07, 2026
Aug 07, 2026
This article is written jointly with Dr. Dhananjhay Gangineni
When a Vice-Chancellor becomes a Ceo
How India’s new Universities are evolving into Strategic Business Units and why the future Vice-Chancellor (VC) may need the mind of an academic, the instincts of an entrepreneur and the discipline of a corporate Chief.
What exactly is a university today?
Is it merely a place where professors teach, students learn and examinations are conducted? Or has the modern university become something considerably more complex — a large institutional enterprise managing thousands of students, hundreds or even thousands of employees, multiple campuses, research laboratories, intellectual property, international partnerships, placements, incubation centers, digital platforms, hospitals, hostels, real estate and substantial financial resources?
And if the university itself has changed, can its leader remain unchanged?
Can the VC of a large modern university continue to function merely as the senior-most academic administrator? Or must the VC increasingly think like the CEO of a diversified corporation — allocating capital, developing institutional strategy, building brands, managing talent, entering new markets, competing globally and protecting the reputation of the organization?
Perhaps the most interesting transformation occurring in Indian higher education is not taking place inside the classroom. It is taking place inside the VC's office.
The Engineering College That ‘Refused’ to Remain a College
For several decades after independence, the architecture of Indian higher education was relatively straightforward. There were universities. Under those universities were affiliated colleges. An engineering college largely taught engineering. A medical college taught medicine. A commerce college taught commerce. The institution had a reasonably defined academic boundary. That boundary is now disappearing.
Many institutions that began with a strong engineering or technology orientation have progressively developed into much broader university ecosystems encompassing engineering, computer science, management, law, medicine, pharmacy, design, liberal arts, economics, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), data science, entrepreneurship and other disciplines.
This direction is not accidental. It is consistent with India's national higher-education policy. The National Education Policy 2020 envisages that by 2040 higher educational institutions should move towards becoming multidisciplinary institutions, preferably with enrollments running into thousands. It explicitly envisages the gradual phasing out of single-stream institutions in favour of multidisciplinary universities or institutional clusters.
UGC's 2023 regulations for institutions deemed-to-be universities similarly emphasize multidisciplinary education and research. Among other requirements, an institution seeking deemed-university status through the general route is expected to be multidisciplinary, with at least five departments or programs.
Therefore, what appears superficially to be the transformation of colleges into universities is actually part of a much larger structural transformation. India is moving from the college model towards the institutional ecosystem model. And scale is arriving rapidly.
UGC's current database lists 558 private universities, 521 state universities, 157 deemed-to-be universities and 57 central universities.
The broader expansion of higher education has been equally dramatic. According to the Ministry of Education's AISHE 2021–22 data, higher-education enrollment reached nearly 4.33 crore students, compared with 3.42 crore in 2014–15 — an increase of 26.5%. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) rose from 23.7% to 28.4% during the same period, while 341 university-level institutions were established between 2014–15 and 2021–22.
These are no longer small educational establishments. They are institutional economies.
The University as an ‘SBU’
Corporate strategy gives us an interesting framework through which to understand this transformation: the Strategic Business Unit, or SBU.
An SBU is a semi-autonomous unit within a larger organization that serves a particular market, operates around a particular product or service portfolio, possesses identifiable competitors and is evaluated against defined strategic objectives.
Now walk through a modern multidisciplinary university. There may be:
The resemblance to a diversified corporation is striking. The School of Engineering has its own programs, faculty, laboratories, budgets, accreditation requirements, industry relationships and student market. The Business School has another. The Medical School has another. Online education operates through another delivery architecture. Executive education targets working professionals rather than conventional undergraduate students.
International programs address yet another market. Each possesses characteristics remarkably similar to an SBU. The university has therefore begun to resemble a holding architecture of knowledge enterprises.
The VC sits at the apex. Deans increasingly resemble business-unit heads. Heads of departments resemble functional managers. Admissions functions resemble customer-acquisition operations — though students must never be reduced conceptually to customers alone. Career-services departments resemble market-interface functions. Research offices resemble R&D divisions. Technology-transfer offices resemble intellectual-property commercialization units. Incubators resemble corporate venture studios. International-relations offices resemble global business-development teams. Alumni relations increasingly resemble stakeholder and network management. Rankings, accreditation and institutional communications collectively perform some of the functions associated with reputation management and corporate brand strategy. The terminology remains academic. The managerial architecture increasingly does not.
The VC Is Becoming the University's ‘CEO’
The traditional VC was expected principally to be a scholar-administrator. Academic integrity, faculty appointments, examinations, university statutes, convocations, disciplinary matters and government relations dominated the office.
The contemporary VC faces an entirely different managerial landscape. Consider what the leader of a large university must now understand.
That begins to sound remarkably similar to the job description of a CEO. There is even a structural parallel in governance. UGC regulations provide formal governing structures for deemed universities; earlier regulations, for instance, explicitly recognized the ‘Board of Management’ as the highest governing body and contemplated leadership by the VC or a distinguished academic.
The modern VC, therefore, occupies an unusual position. He or she must simultaneously be the Chief Academic Officer, Chief Strategist, Chief Reputation Custodian, Chief Institutional Diplomat and, increasingly, Chief Executive. That is an extraordinarily demanding combination.
From ‘Academic Administration’ to ‘Strategic Management’
The distinction between the traditional university and the contemporary university can perhaps be expressed simply. The traditional university largely administered education. The modern university must increasingly strategize education.
Administration asks: "How many students have enrolled?"
Strategy asks: "Which programs will students need five years from now?"
Administration asks: "How many professors do we have?"
Strategy asks: "Which researchers must we recruit if we want to build a globally recognised AI, semiconductor or biotechnology cluster?"
Administration asks: "How many companies attended placements?"
Strategy asks: "Which industries are expanding, what skills will they require and how should our curriculum change before the employment market changes?"
Administration asks: "How many research papers were published?"
Strategy asks: "How much intellectual property, industrial innovation and societal impact emerged from that research?"
The difference is enormous. It is the difference between maintaining an institution and positioning one.
Universities Now Compete Like ‘Companies’
Companies compete for customers, employees, capital, technology and market share.
Universities increasingly compete for five corresponding resources: students, faculty, research funding, institutional partnerships, and reputation.
A talented student choosing among five universities represents something similar to a customer exercising market choice, although education is far more than a commercial transaction.
A distinguished professor receiving competing offers resembles scarce executive or technical talent in the corporate labor market. Research grants resemble competitive capital allocation. international university partnerships resemble strategic alliances. Rankings operate partly as reputation signals. Placements affect institutional attractiveness. Alumni outcomes reinforce brand equity. Research citations strengthen intellectual credibility. Patents demonstrate innovation capacity. The analogy becomes stronger as institutions expand.
Consider BITS Pilani. It originated with a strong science and engineering identity but today encompasses engineering, sciences, humanities, economics, finance, pharmacy, management and newer institutional ventures. Its ecosystem includes campuses in Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad and Dubai, while its Mumbai presence includes a management school, law school and design school.
BITS reports more than 18,500 students, about 930 faculty members, over Rs.398 crore in external research funding in the last five years, 221 patents filed and 41 granted. It also reports more than 7,500 alumni founders and co-founders and 14 BITSian unicorns.
That is not merely a college delivering lectures. It is a knowledge, research, entrepreneurship and talent ecosystem.
Consider SRM Institute of Science and Technology. Its ecosystem reports around 100,000 students (2024-25 Annual Report) and 5,200-plus faculty, with more than 300 programs spanning engineering, medicine, dentistry and health sciences, science and humanities, management, law, agriculture and hotel management. Its institutional information also reports more than Rs.300 crores of research funding, 25,000 publications and 100+ patents to its name. At its convocation, the university reported 491 patents, 42 start-ups and Rs.108.18 crore in scholarships alongside its academic achievements.
Again, think about the managerial implications. Managing 100,000 students and thousands of faculty members is organizational leadership at enormous scale. The title may say ‘VC.’ The operating environment says ‘Chief Executive.’
The ‘University Portfolio’ Begins to Resemble a ‘Corporate Portfolio’
There is another fascinating similarity. Large corporations constantly evaluate their product portfolios. Which businesses should receive more investment? Which markets are growing? Which products are declining? Where should capital expenditure be increased? Where should the company acquire capabilities? Where should it collaborate rather than build internally?
Modern universities increasingly confront identical questions.
Should the university establish a School of AI? Should Computer Science intake expand? Should conventional engineering branches be redesigned? Should it enter semiconductor education? Should it launch programs in cybersecurity? Should it establish a law school? Should it introduce design-thinking program? Should it build a medical school? Should it create an online university? Should it enter executive education? Should it establish an overseas campus?
These are essentially portfolio strategy decisions.
A university may, therefore, increasingly need something resembling the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix — not literally for deciding the intellectual worth of disciplines, but metaphorically for understanding program demand, strategic relevance and resource requirements.
Computer science might be experiencing extraordinary demand. AI may be a high-growth investment area. A mature program may remain academically important despite slower enrollment growth. An emerging interdisciplinary program may require years of investment before producing reputational returns.
The critical difference is that universities cannot simply behave like corporations and discontinue disciplines merely because they produce weak financial returns. A corporation may abandon an unprofitable product. A university sometimes has a civilizational responsibility to preserve an "unprofitable" subject.
Sanskrit, philosophy, history, pure mathematics or fundamental physics cannot be assessed merely through placement packages. This is precisely where the university–corporation analogy must end.
Students are ‘Stakeholders,’ Not Customers
There is a dangerous temptation in the corporatization of education. If universities resemble companies, students may gradually be treated as customers. If students become customers, degrees may become products. If degrees become products, faculty become service providers. And once the philosophy of "the customer is always right" enters the classroom, academic standards can become negotiable. That would be disastrous.
A professor sometimes has to tell a student: "You are wrong." A university sometimes has to fail a student. A doctoral committee must sometimes reject a thesis. An admissions committee must sometimes refuse admission. Academic integrity occasionally requires precisely the opposite of customer satisfaction. Education, therefore, cannot become another hospitality industry where everybody receives five stars for participating.
The better corporate analogy is stakeholder capitalism, not consumer capitalism. Students, faculty, parents, industry, government, alumni are all stakeholders. Society itself is the ultimate stakeholder. A VC, therefore, resembles the ‘CEO of a stakeholder-intensive institution,’ but with responsibilities that extend far beyond quarterly performance.
From ‘Placement Cell’ to ‘Market Intelligence Division’
The old placement office largely performed one function: invite companies to campus. The sophisticated university of the future must do considerably more. It must understand labor-market transformation.
If generative AI eliminates certain entry-level tasks, universities need to know. If semiconductor manufacturing expands in India, universities need to respond. If cybersecurity demand rises, curricula must change. If employers increasingly value interdisciplinary problem-solving rather than narrow technical competence, the institution must adapt. That means career services increasingly require something resembling corporate market intelligence.
Industry partnerships are already shaping curricula in some institutions. SRMIST, for instance, describes engineering programs and departmental collaborations involving companies such as AWS, Samsung, Wipro, HCLTech, Volvo and others.
BITS similarly describes continuous curriculum renewal and structured industry engagement, including its long-established Practice School model. The wall separating campus from corporation is becoming porous. That can be enormously beneficial, provided industry relevance supplements rather than replaces intellectual depth.
Research Has Become the University's ‘R&D Engine’
Perhaps nowhere is the SBU analogy stronger than research. The modern research-intensive university manages:
That is remarkably close to an R&D portfolio.
SRMIST's innovation framework, for instance, explicitly addresses intellectual property, incubation, accelerators, commercialization, sponsors, funding, equity, licensing and royalties. Those words would sit comfortably inside the annual report of a technology corporation.
BITS reports hundreds of crores in external research funding and hundreds of patent filings.
Manipal Academy of Higher Education reports partnerships with more than 266 universities worldwide and organizes itself across health sciences, technology and science, management, law, humanities and social sciences. The university is consequently becoming a producer not merely of graduates, but of knowledge assets. And knowledge assets require strategy.
The VC's New Balance Sheet
Corporate CEOs worry about financial capital. University leaders must manage at least five forms of capital.
1. Financial Capital: Tuition income, endowments, grants, donations and infrastructure expenditure.
2. Human Capital: Students, professors, researchers, and administrators.
3. Intellectual Capital: Research, patents, publications and institutional knowledge.
4. Social Capital: Alumni networks, industry relationships and international collaborations.
5. Reputational Capital: Accreditation, rankings, academic integrity and public trust.
The last is perhaps the most valuable.
A corporation can occasionally recover from a bad product. A university can take decades to recover from the loss of academic credibility. Therefore, the VC's invisible balance sheet matters as much as the financial one.
The Dean as the ‘SBU Head’
This changing structure also transforms the role of the Dean.
Imagine a large university containing Engineering, Management, Law, Medicine, Design, Humanities, and AI. Each school has its own competitive landscape. The Dean of Engineering competes for engineering faculty, laboratories, grants and students. The Dean of Management competes with business schools. The Dean of Law operates within a different regulatory and employment ecosystem. The Dean of Medicine faces entirely different capital requirements and professional regulations. This resembles a diversified conglomerate.
The VC defines institutional strategy. The Deans translate that strategy into disciplinary strategy. Departments execute it. Central functions — finance, HR, IT, admissions, communications, international relations and career services — provide common institutional infrastructure.
That is extraordinarily close to the corporate center–SBU model. The university has not consciously copied the conglomerate. Scale has simply pushed both organizations towards similar management architecture.
‘KPIs’ Have Entered the Campus
Another unmistakably corporate phenomenon has entered higher education: measurement.
Universities now track indicators such as research publications, citations, patents, research grants, faculty–student ratios, graduate outcomes, placement rates, international students, international faculty, industry collaborations, start-ups, accreditation scores, rankings, and student progression.
There is nothing inherently wrong with measurement. What gets measured can often be improved. But what gets measured can also be manipulated. If publication counts become targets, predatory publishing may flourish. If placement percentages become the obsession, education can become training. If patents become a key performance indicator (KPI), institutions may chase patent quantity rather than commercial or scientific value. If rankings become the objective rather than the consequence of excellence, the university begins optimizing itself for the scoreboard.
Corporations know this phenomenon well. When the KPI becomes the purpose, strategy becomes theater. Universities must learn that lesson before repeating it.
The ‘CEO Model’ Has Advantages
The emergence of the entrepreneurial VC should not automatically be viewed negatively. Indeed, Indian higher education needs far stronger institutional leadership. A CEO-minded VC can bring speed to decision-making. He can identify emerging disciplines, recruit internationally, create interdisciplinary schools, attract research capital, establish incubators, build industry partnerships, internationalize the university, professionalize administration, use data rather than intuition, and demand accountability.
Most importantly, entrepreneurial university leadership can move institutions from being degree-distribution mechanisms to innovation ecosystems. That is precisely what India needs if it wants universities capable of competing with the world's strongest research institutions.
But a University Is ‘Not a Company’
This distinction must never be forgotten. A company's principal economic obligation is ‘value creation’ for its stakeholders and, depending upon its ownership model, its shareholders. A university has a larger obligation: its duty is to knowledge itself.
A company asks: Will this generate returns? A university must additionally ask: Is this worth knowing?
A corporation may protect proprietary knowledge. A university traditionally disseminates knowledge.
A corporation can optimize for efficiency. A university must sometimes tolerate intellectual inefficiency because discovery itself is inefficient. Ten experiments may fail before the eleventh succeeds.
A philosopher may spend years examining a question with no immediate commercial application. A historian may preserve manuscripts that generate no placement package. A mathematician may develop theory whose practical significance becomes visible decades later. The university, therefore, cannot become merely Corporate India with classrooms. It must borrow the corporation's discipline without inheriting its commercial myopia.
The Ideal VC: ‘Half Scholar, Half CEO’
The future VC, therefore, requires an unusual intellectual architecture. The person must understand academia sufficiently to protect academic freedom; must understand finance sufficiently to keep the institution sustainable; must understand research sufficiently to distinguish genuine scholarship from publication manufacturing; must understand industry sufficiently to make education relevant; must understand technology, but also philosophy; must understand rankings, but not worship them; must understand marketing, but must never allow marketing to outrun academic reality; must understand competition, but must also understand collaboration; must pursue growth, but must know when growth begins damaging quality. In other words, the VC cannot merely become the CEO. The VC must become something harder to find: a scholar-CEO.
From ‘University Administration’ to ‘University Strategy’
India's universities stand at an extraordinary moment. The country already has more than four crore students in higher education. Its policy architecture explicitly encourages larger multidisciplinary institutions. Private universities now constitute a substantial part of the institutional landscape, with UGC listing 558 of them.
The next phase will, therefore, not merely concern building more campuses. It will concern building better-governed universities. And that demands importing some of the following best practices of corporate strategy:
But universities should import these tools selectively. The campus needs corporate efficiency, but not corporate short-termism. It needs strategic management, but not academic commercialization at any cost. It needs financial sustainability, but not education reduced to a balance sheet. It needs branding, but reputation must emerge from excellence rather than advertising expenditure. It needs employability, but employability must never become the sole definition of education.
Final Thoughts
The University Must Borrow the Corporation's ‘Brain’ Without Selling Its ‘Soul’
Perhaps we are entering an age in which the distinction between ‘educational institutions’ and ‘enterprises’ will become increasingly blurred.
The modern university is simultaneously a school, research laboratory, innovation ecosystem, talent factory, intellectual-property generator, technology platform, start-up incubator, international network and social institution. Its schools increasingly resemble SBUs. Its Deans increasingly resemble business-unit leaders. Its research centers resemble R&D divisions. Its international offices resemble global-strategy teams. Its placement offices increasingly perform market-interface functions. And its VC increasingly resembles a CEO.
But one profound difference must remain. The CEO manages an organization whose success can ultimately be expressed substantially through economic value. The VC manages an institution whose true value may not become visible for generations. A company manufactures products. A university helps manufacture possibilities. A corporation builds market capital. A university builds human and intellectual capital. A CEO may influence the next quarter, the next product cycle or the next decade. A great VC can influence minds that will shape the next half-century.
So, perhaps the question before Indian higher education is not whether universities should be run like corporations. That question is too simplistic. The better questions are these:
Can our universities acquire the strategic discipline of corporations without acquiring their obsession with commercial returns?
Can VCs become entrepreneurial leaders without allowing education to become merely another industry?
Can schools and faculties operate with SBU-like accountability while preserving intellectual freedom across disciplines that may never become financially lucrative?
Can India create universities that are financially sustainable, technologically sophisticated, globally competitive and yet fundamentally devoted to scholarship?
And finally, can the university borrow the ‘brain of the corporation’ without surrendering the ‘soul of the gurukul’?
If India can answer that question correctly, its universities will not merely produce employees for the world's corporations. They may produce the scholars, scientists, entrepreneurs, philosophers, administrators and institution-builders who create the corporations — and the civilization — of tomorrow.
08-Aug-2026
More by : P. Mohan Chandran
