Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran on Friday, 18 September 2026, warned that artificial intelligence could pose the defining challenge to management education over the next two to three decades — not by making courses obsolete, but by eliminating the entry-level work through which young professionals have traditionally learnt their trade. He was addressing the 16th Indian Management Conclave (IMC 2026) in Noida.

The Core Warning: Apprenticeship at Risk

Nageswaran argued that the most consequential threat AI poses to business education is not the disruption of classrooms but the erasure of early-career apprenticeships. Routine and codified tasks — the very assignments that once taught junior professionals how to analyse, decide, and learn — are among the first to be automated.

'The bottom rungs of the ladder are being sawn off. The routine tasks that once taught the young their trade are the first to be automated,' he said. Without those formative years of on-the-job learning, he questioned how the next generation would develop the capacity for complex decision-making: 'For a century, we learn judgement on the job, slowly through apprenticeship…and if AI removes the apprenticeship, where will the next generation of judgement be?'

Why Adding an AI Elective Is Not Enough

Nageswaran was direct in dismissing superficial curriculum fixes. He said management institutions that respond by merely appending AI-related modules to their syllabi would miss the point entirely. 'Adding one AI elective will not be enough,' he said, stressing that the real imperative is to rebuild how students are taught to think.

He identified the manager's fundamental asset as a clear and patient mind — and argued that this asset is already under pressure before students even reach campus, eroded by the same technology that will later compete with them professionally. 'The manager's core tool is a clear and patient mind. That tool is under attack before the students even reach the campuses. So these are India's real challenges over the next 20 to 30 years,' he said.

Teach Judgement, Not Just Technique

The CEA called for a fundamental reorientation of what management education prioritises. As AI grows capable of performing analysis, the differentiating skill will be knowing what questions to ask and whether AI-generated answers can be trusted — neither of which can be drilled through conventional coursework alone.

'First, teach judgement, not just technique,' Nageswaran said. He suggested that case studies and structured decision-making exercises offer a more productive path toward building judgement than lecture-based instruction. Notably, he acknowledged the inherent difficulty: the very skills that AI cannot easily replicate are also the hardest to transmit through a classroom.

'This is not a small problem for management education, it could be the whole problem,' he said.

Broader Implications for India's Workforce

Nageswaran's remarks carry weight beyond the seminar room. India produces hundreds of thousands of management graduates annually, many of whom enter firms in analytical and process-driven roles that are precisely those most exposed to AI automation. If the entry-level pipeline narrows significantly, the consequences could ripple across hiring, compensation, and the long-term pipeline of experienced managers — a structural shift with no easy policy lever.

This comes amid a broader global debate on how higher education should respond to generative AI, with institutions from Harvard Business School to IIM Ahmedabad reportedly reviewing curriculum frameworks. Nageswaran's intervention signals that India's top economic policymakers are now treating the question as a priority, not a distant hypothetical. How management schools respond in the next few years will likely determine whether India's talent pipeline adapts in time.