By: Vineeth Thomas, Founder & Managing Partner, Immersion India
A degree tells us what someone has studied. Increasingly, the more interesting question is what they have done with what they know.
That distinction is becoming important across global education. Universities are not abandoning knowledge, nor should they. But knowledge by itself is becoming less scarce. Information that once required hours in a library can now be accessed, synthesised and explained almost instantly. As artificial intelligence makes information still more abundant, the premium is moving elsewhere, towards judgement, adaptability, curiosity and the ability to function intelligently in unfamiliar situations.
This is why experiential learning is becoming a new currency of education. Not because experience is replacing academic rigour, but because it gives knowledge context. A student who has studied supply chains and then stood inside a factory understands something different. A business student who has interviewed entrepreneurs in an emerging market begins to appreciate the distance between a business model and the circumstances in which it must work. A public-policy student who has spent time with communities affected by policy encounters complexities that rarely survive into a PowerPoint presentation.
The world appears increasingly willing to invest in such exposure. UNESCO reported in 2026 that global higher-education enrolment had reached 269 million students, more than double the level two decades earlier. Over approximately the same period, the number studying outside their home countries more than tripled, reaching about 7.3 million. International mobility still touches only a small proportion of the world’s students, but its trajectory says something important about what learners and institutions increasingly value: education across contexts, cultures and borders. (UNESCO)
Europe offers perhaps the most established example. Erasmus+, which has made learning mobility part of the architecture of European education, supported almost 1.5 million people on mobility programmes in 2024. The European Commission explicitly associates studying abroad with stronger communication, language and intercultural capabilities as well as the development of soft skills valued by employers. (Erasmus+)
But experiential learning should not be reduced to studying abroad. It includes internships, field immersion, live industry projects, community engagement, research in unfamiliar environments and assignments that compel students to apply concepts rather than merely reproduce them. What these experiences share is a simple principle: the learner has to participate in the problem.
That is increasingly relevant to employers. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that structural changes will disrupt 22% of today’s jobs by 2030, with 170 million roles created and 92 million displaced. Alongside technological capabilities, employers continue to place high importance on analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility, agility, creative thinking and curiosity. (Global Competitiveness Report) These are important skills, but they are awkward things to teach as subjects. There is no meaningful three-credit course in resilience.
Experience, however, creates situations in which these capabilities must be exercised.
Consider what happens when students enter an environment they do not completely understand. They have to listen before forming conclusions. They discover that assumptions built in one culture do not always travel well into another. Plans fail. People disagree. Data is incomplete. A carefully constructed hypothesis meets an inconvenient reality. The student has to adapt.
That is not a failure of the educational process. It is often the most valuable part of it.
There is evidence that students themselves recognise the value. In the United States, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reported that 84% of the Class of 2025 participated in an internship, co-op or other form of experiential learning. NACE’s broader research has consistently associated participation in experiential education with stronger early-career outcomes, including more job offers and higher starting salaries on average. (Default)
The important word, however, is learning. Experience is not automatically educational. Sending students to another country, placing them inside a company or arranging ten institutional visits in five days may produce an impressive itinerary without producing much insight. The value comes from design: what students understand before the experience, what questions they are asked to investigate, whom they encounter, how different experiences connect, and how they reflect afterwards.
This is where institutions have to raise the bar. The objective cannot simply be exposure. It must be interpretation.
For universities, this also changes the meaning of global education. Internationalisation has often been measured through exchange numbers, foreign students, overseas campuses or institutional partnerships. Those indicators remain important, but a truly global education is ultimately about developing people capable of functioning across difference. The OECD’s work on global competence similarly emphasises the ability to mobilise knowledge, attitudes, skills and values together rather than treating them as separate educational outcomes. (OECD)
For countries such as India, there is an additional opportunity. Students do not necessarily have to cross an ocean to encounter dramatic differences in markets, languages, institutions, industries, communities and economic realities. Within a single country they can move from technology clusters to manufacturing centres, rural economies, heritage cities, social enterprises and some of the world’s most sophisticated digital public infrastructure. Properly designed, this complexity becomes an extraordinary learning asset.
Perhaps this is why experiential learning increasingly feels like a currency. It carries value from one setting into another. It tells an employer something a grade cannot. It gives academic theory something against which to be tested. And it gives a young person something increasingly difficult to acquire from information alone: perspective.
The degree will remain important. Knowledge will remain fundamental.
But in an uncertain world, the graduates who stand apart may increasingly be those who can say not only, “I learnt this,” but “I encountered it, tested it, and discovered what it means in the real world.”
