The Glass Lab Illusion: A Wake-Up Call to Our Indian Colleges

The Glass Lab Illusion

They built glass labs.
They hung banners with logos of global tech giants.
They said: Look, we are ready for the age of AI.

But when asked, “How will you teach students to think? To solve real problems — political, social, technological, economic, legal, environmental?”

Silence.
Blank faces.
A polite, “We will discuss with our team.”

The same team that built the lab of glass, but not the mind of steel.

They spoke of visiting ministers, actors, IAS officers, and Harvard-returned professors. They showed us walls filled with accreditations, certificates, and trophies. Yet none could show a single idea that mattered. Not one problem solved. Not one student who thought.

Some even bragged: “We serve organic food to our students.”
As if that were an achievement.
It’s like saying, “See, our students are breathing.”
Feeding them organic food is not a revolution — it’s a responsibility.
The real nourishment must be for their minds.

They are proud of their laboratories. But a lab is not a mind.
They are proud of their PhDs. But a degree is not wisdom.
They are proud of their free education. But “free” is not freedom.

We told them: “If you offer quality education free to students, we will work for free for you.”
Because what’s the use of charging for something that has lost its soul?

This illusion — that a college is a factory and the student a product — has gone too far. Professors chase salaries, not truth. Students chase grades, not knowledge. Administrators chase visiting dignitaries, not ideas.

And the cost?
Twenty-eight thousand startups failed.
Not for lack of funds, but for lack of thinking.

The age of AI is not coming — it is already here. Machines now do what degrees once promised. Four years, hundreds of exams, and yet no capacity to question, to imagine, to doubt — the very things that make us human.

So here is the question every college must face:
Do you educate minds, or do you manufacture credentials?
Do you teach students to think, or to obey?

The truth is uncomfortable, but it must be spoken: education without reflection is propaganda.

The world is breaking the old order. Only those honest enough to rebuild from the inside will survive it. Reason must replace rhetoric. Integrity must replace illusion.

To the chairmen, principals, and funders — wake up.
You are not running a college; you are holding a mirror.
And the reflection is fading.

It is time to choose:

Build another glass lab, or build a generation that can think.