Rankings, accreditation, and placement outcomes, bring a degree of transparency and can push institutions to maintain certain standards. But they are, after all, measurements of a particular moment.

The larger question is whether a university has been built to remain intellectually alive as technology, industry and society continue to change around it.

“Resilience is not the ability to keep changing. It is the ability to change intelligently without losing institutional purpose,” says Dr Prashanth Venugopal, secretary of IQAC, St Pauls College, Bengaluru.  

Resilient institutions are rooted in enduring human questions, while still having the flexibility to change their tools, disciplines and methods without losing their academic identity.

That means moving away from rigid, department-first structures and creating systems of learning in which technology engages with ethics, engineering with climate, data with public policy, and research with the real challenges facing society.

“Faculty who work directly with students should have the strongest voice because they see what is happening on the ground,” Dr Prashanth says.

Industry partnerships have an important role to play here, but not simply as a route to placements. They can provide a continuing source of insight, experimentation and applied research.

“Academic governance has to remain strong enough to ensure that immediate market demand does not come at the cost of intellectual depth or the larger purpose of the institution,” Sumesh Nair, co-founder of Board Infinity, says.

“Universities should prepare students not merely for the first job, but for the ability to learn the next job,” Dr Prashanth says. Perhaps, then, the more meaningful measure of a university is not where it stands in a ranking this year, but whether it is preparing students for questions that have not yet been asked.

Institutions that endure will not necessarily be remembered for how quickly they expanded. They will be remembered for what they chose to stand for — and for how well they were able to renew themselves without losing that purpose.

The oldest universities in the world have existed for a thousand years or more. The real question, therefore, is not simply how to remain relevant today, but what it takes to build an institution that can remain relevant for the next thousand years.