What makes a degree “safe” in 2026? Artificial intelligence seems to fundamentally alter more and more tasks attached to established professions each week, while employers are changing what they expect from graduates with every passing batch. A 2026 Graduate Outlook Survey released by the CFA Institute found that 74% of Indian graduates believe AI and automation could make securing their preferred jobs harder.
Uncertainty about the future of work is hardly new, though. Every major technological disruption has forced people to make choices before consequences could be felt in any meaningful form. When new industries emerge before there are established career paths into them, existing professions inevitably acquire unfamiliar demands, and the skills that seem valuable at one moment can look very different a few years later.
The dotcom boom around the turn of the millennium was one such period. The internet was opening up businesses and forms of media that had barely existed before, creating opportunities whose eventual scale was difficult to predict. For young people entering higher education, waiting to see exactly how it would all play out was not really an option. They had to choose anyway, even as the contours of the new economy remained unclear.
Some chose to move towards the uncertainty rather than away from it. In Bengaluru, for instance, a group of students enrolled in a postgraduate Mass Communication course at Central College in 2000, when the field was still relatively nascent.
For many of them, there was little reason to regard the course as an obvious career choice. Several came from modest or rural backgrounds and were first-generation learners. Their classmates included students from considerably more privileged families. Yet the field’s uncertainty was also what made it attractive: there was room to find out what it could become.
One member of that batch was V Lakshman, a journalist-turned-public relations professional whose career would eventually take him into Karnataka’s public-sector undertakings and, later, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). Now a Senior Facilitation cum Liaison Officer at NAAC, Lakshman has spent more than three decades moving between media, public relations and public service. He also recently chronicled that journey in his memoir, Unshackled: Reminiscences of a Wandering Soul. Looking back 25 years later, he recalls why he and his classmates were willing to take the chance.
“Mass Communication was still a niche course then, and was mostly opted for by girls rather than boys. Other courses involved rote learning, be it natural science, chemistry or physics, and the outcome was often the same: look for a mundane job. We saw something new in Mass Communication because the field had not been fully explored yet.”
They were also looking beyond the media industry that existed around them. Newspapers remained dominant, but news channels, websites, dotcoms, social media, public relations and branding were beginning to create new possibilities. Their first years after graduation were difficult, with modest salaries and uncertain prospects, and no clear route from the degree to what came next.
“We worked for meagre salaries, while encountering media barons, technicians, editors, journalists and novices. Our concept of media changed drastically; what we learned in college and what we encountered in the field were totally different. There was an opportunity to go the extra mile and conceptualise a 24-hour vernacular news channel, at one point, which was unheard of at the time and a big challenge for survival. We did it anyway.”
The venture eventually succeeded, and some of those involved went on to establish their own media organisations. Lakshman, meanwhile, left journalism for government service, only to find himself questioning the move not long after.
“There were times when I contemplated moving back to something more comfortable, having grown frustrated with my bureaucratic role in the initial months. It was a cultural shock and quite suffocating. I even reached out to my former editor, expressing my desire to return to reporting, and he was willing to take me back. However, my good friend Pankaj Mishra, a veteran journalist, convinced me to stay put and persevere through the challenges.”
Twenty-five years on, Lakshman has remained in government service, while several of his former classmates have built careers across journalism, advertising, entertainment and media entrepreneurship. Their paths have diverged considerably, but none followed a neatly mapped route from degree to destination.
Looking back, would he make the same choice again? Lakshman believes he would. The industry has changed dramatically since their college days, and he sees that constant evolution as reason to believe the choice still holds up.
“Despite the new challenges around us, we would make the same choice even today. Change is the order of the day, and it is pertinent to move with changing requirements, be it programming, technology, content or branding.”
The students entering higher education in 2026 are facing a new technological upheaval compared to previous generations, but not an entirely different problem. The batch of 2000 could not know what the internet would do to media, just as today's students cannot know exactly how AI will alter the professions they are preparing to enter. Waiting for certainty before making a choice may simply mean waiting for something that never comes.
Perhaps, then, the more useful question is not whether a degree can guarantee a particular career or standard of living. It is whether it can give students enough knowledge, skills and exposure to keep making good choices when the career they imagined begins to change.