Peking University’s Institute for Global Health and Development (GHD) and Malaysia’s Sunway University have signed a five-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on research, training and policy work in planetary health, the two institutions said.

The agreement was signed on 14 August at the International Planetary Health High-Level Forum in Beijing, hosted by the Institute, before an audience of scientists and policymakers from across China.

Peking University, Sunway University: Health systems resilience, and environmental governance

Under the MoU, the two universities plan to pursue joint research projects, co-authored publications, policy briefs and shared funding applications across climate and health, health systems resilience, and environmental governance.

The agreement also provides for regular conferences, seminars and policy dialogues; exchange programmes for faculty, researchers and students, including visiting-scholar and internship opportunities; and joint curriculum development and capacity-building for early-career researchers in the field.

As part of the agreement, Professor Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, was appointed Senior Fellow of Global Health at the Beijing institute — a recognition, the institutions said, of Malaysian leadership in the field.

Professor Gordon G. Liu, dean of the Institute for Global Health and Development, said the partnership brought together “two institutions with a shared conviction that the health of people and the planet cannot be separated,” adding that the two sides would “build research and training capacity that serves not just our two institutions, but the wider region.”

Professor Sibrandes Poppema, president and vice-chancellor of Sunway University, said the MoU was “an important opportunity to strengthen collaboration across borders and disciplines in advancing Planetary Health,” and that combining the two institutions’ expertise would “deepen research, knowledge exchange and capacity-building to address the complex and interconnected challenges affecting the health of people and our planet.”

The MoU was signed by Liu; Mahmood; and Poppema.

Peking University traces its origins to the Imperial University of Peking, founded in 1898 as China’s first national comprehensive university. It now comprises six faculties, 55 schools and departments, 60 research entities and ten affiliated hospitals, with more than 48,600 students — including nearly 2,500 international students — and over 12,600 faculty and staff, according to the university.

GHD was established in 2020 with Liu as founding dean. The cross-disciplinary institute works across health economics, public health, international relations, environmental science and digital technology, and describes its mandate as addressing global health issues “from the perspective of human development.”

Sunway University is a private Malaysian institution that has been ranked among the world’s top universities by QS, and named ASEAN’s top private university by AppliedHE and Times Higher Education, the university said. Its Centre for Planetary Health, headed by Mahmood, works across three priority areas: healthy cities, health-centred decarbonisation and education reform in the field.

When India’s engineering education boom began in the early 2000s, colleges appeared almost overnight. Across states such as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, new campuses promised the same dream: an engineering degree, a campus placement, and a pathway into India’s growing technology economy.

Two decades later, that dream is being quietly re-sorted

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has confirmed that 58 engineering and technical colleges were shut through “progressive closure” during the 2025–26 academic year. Under this process, existing students are allowed to finish their degrees, but the institutions will never admit another first-year batch. In the same period, AICTE discontinued more than 950 individual engineering and technical courses — a far larger number that signals a restructuring well beyond 58 campus gates.

Read in isolation, the closures look like housekeeping. Read alongside the rest of AICTE’s own data, they tell a more interesting — and more complicated — story: India isn’t simply running out of appetite for engineering. It is running out of patience for engineering colleges that never had a real reason to exist.

Not a Few Bad Colleges, but a Sector Sorting Itself Out

Engineering remains India’s largest professional education stream. And contrary to the closures’ gloomy optics, national demand has actually been recovering, not collapsing. AICTE data shows undergraduate BTech enrolment hit an eight-year high of roughly 12.53 lakh students in 2024–25 — a 67% jump over 2017–18 — while the national vacancy rate fell to about 16%, down from over 40% earlier in the decade. Approved intake for 2025–26 has climbed further, to nearly 16 lakh seats, and the number of AICTE-approved institutions rose for the first time in six years.

So the headline closures and the headline recovery are happening at once. That is the real story: engineering education in India isn’t shrinking, it’s polarising. Demand is concentrating hard around computer science, AI and allied “new-age” branches, while core disciplines and lower-tier private colleges — often in Tier 2 and 3 towns, propped up on volume rather than reputation — are being left behind. Some institutions have reportedly cut core-branch seats by as much as half just to stay viable.

According to AICTE, the 58 colleges closed this cycle for familiar reasons: persistently low admissions, shortages of qualified faculty, inadequate infrastructure, and failure to meet prescribed operational norms. Of the 58, only three were government-aided; the rest were privately financed.

Those reasons are symptoms, not the disease. Many of these colleges were built during the 2000s and 2010s on the assumption that demand for engineering seats would keep expanding indefinitely. Regulators and state governments largely let it happen, approving new colleges and intake increases with little independent assessment of local demand. When AICTE lifted its moratorium on new colleges and seat expansion in 2023, seats surged again — but overwhelmingly into computer science and AI-adjacent branches, not into the traditional streams these smaller colleges were built around.

The market is correcting itself. It’s simply correcting toward specific colleges and specific branches, not away from engineering as a whole.

The Geography of Decline

The pattern of closures is revealing. Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra recorded the highest number, with 12 institutions each, followed by Madhya Pradesh (8). Telangana and Punjab lost four each; Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, three each; Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, two each; and Haryana, Odisha, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Puducherry, one each.

These are not peripheral states — several of them house some of India’s largest engineering education ecosystems, and some (Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh) are simultaneously seeing among the sharpest increases in sanctioned seats nationally, almost entirely in CSE and AI streams. That combination — colleges closing at the bottom while seats expand at the top of the same state’s system — is the clearest evidence that this is a quality and relevance sort, not a demand collapse.

It also raises uncomfortable policy questions. Did states encourage the creation of more engineering colleges than their local economies — or student populations — could sustainably support? And now that the moratorium on capacity has been lifted again, is the system simply repeating the mistake in a new, AI-shaped form, this time by over-expanding computer science seats faster than faculty, labs, or the job market can absorb them? Telangana’s High Court, for instance, upheld a state decision this year to deny colleges’ requests for more CSE seats, citing unfilled vacancies and the need to balance emerging and core disciplines — a sign regulators are already worried about repeating history.

The Students No One Is Talking About

AICTE calls this “progressive closure” because students already enrolled are allowed to complete their degrees. On paper, the arrangement protects them.

But regulations cannot account for psychology.

Imagine being a second-year engineering student and discovering that your college will never admit another batch.

The classrooms become quieter every year. Senior students graduate without replacements. Faculty members begin searching for jobs elsewhere. Campus events shrink. Recruiters may wonder whether investing time in campus visits at a closing institution is worth it at all. The institution slowly transforms from a living college into one simply completing its final academic cycle.

AICTE rightly ensures academic continuity, but continuity is not the same as confidence. For students, questions inevitably arise:

Will companies continue to recruit here?

Will laboratories remain fully staffed and operational?

Will experienced faculty stay until we graduate, or leave for stabler institutions?

Will the market start to quietly discount the value of our degree?

These anxieties rarely appear in policy documents, yet they may shape a student’s remaining college years far more than the closure order itself ever will.

The End of the Engineering Gold Rush — and the Start of a New One

India’s engineering sector is not collapsing. The country’s premier institutions — IITs, NITs, and a handful of leading state universities — continue to attract intense competition, and enrolment nationally just hit an eight-year high.

The contraction is happening elsewhere: among institutions that relied on volume rather than academic distinction, and within branches that no longer match student aspiration or employer demand.

Student preferences have shifted decisively. Computer science, AI, cybersecurity, semiconductor engineering, robotics and data science are pulling in applicants, while traditional branches at many private colleges — mechanical, civil, and others — struggle to fill classrooms even as they remain, in AICTE’s own words, “critical” to the economy. Employers, meanwhile, increasingly evaluate graduates on skills, internships, portfolios and demonstrated problem-solving rather than the degree certificate alone. The discontinuation of more than 950 individual courses this cycle reinforces just how granular this restructuring has become — it isn’t only whole colleges being cut, but entire programmes within colleges that otherwise survive.

A Moment for Rethinking Technical Education

The closure of 58 colleges shouldn’t be read simply as a story of institutional failure, and it shouldn’t be read as proof that engineering itself is in decline — the enrolment numbers say otherwise. It is, instead, a reminder that India’s engineering education model, built during an era of rapid, largely unscrutinised expansion, needs a different philosophy for a very different moment: one where CSE and AI seats are growing so fast that regulators are already debating whether to cap them, even as the colleges that bet everything on the old core-branch, mass-enrolment model run out of road.

The challenge is no longer producing more engineers. It is producing engineers — across every branch, not just the fashionable ones — whose education stays relevant to a labour market being reshaped by automation, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing. That demands fewer empty classrooms, stronger industry partnerships, updated curricula, and real accountability for both old-guard core-branch colleges and the new wave of AI-branded ones — not simply more campuses chasing whichever keyword is trending this admissions cycle.

For the thousands of students still studying at institutions now in progressive closure, the concern is intensely personal: finishing a degree without losing confidence in its value.

For policymakers, the question is bigger, and it cuts both ways. If the old engineering boom is over for some colleges, and a new one is already inflating around AI and computer science for others — what should replace the model that let both of these things happen unsupervised the first time?

Planting trees and organising awareness campaigns are valuable, but they cannot replace environmental literacy. As climate change increasingly shapes everyday life, India’s schools must teach students how environmental systems, public policy and sustainability are interconnected.

Every year, schools across India mark World Environment Day with the same rituals. Children plant saplings, make posters, join cleanliness drives, and pledge to “save the environment.” A photograph is taken, a few speeches are made, and the saplings are watered for a week or two before the event winds down and environmental education slips back to the margins of the curriculum. There is nothing wrong with planting trees. The concern is what happens when tree-planting, poster-making and occasional awareness drives become the whole of environmental education: children end up with a dangerously thin understanding of the environmental forces that already govern their lives.

India’s environmental problems are no longer confined to the classroom or the textbook. Heatwaves have thrown school timetables out of kilter. Air pollution affects children’s health and their ability to concentrate. Floods and cyclones disrupt attendance and damage school infrastructure. Water shortages are a recurring reality in many parts of the country, and waste management, plastic pollution, groundwater depletion and biodiversity loss are becoming questions of everyday survival rather than abstract concerns. Yet much of environmental education still treats the environment as something outside the classroom, and environmental protection as an occasional act of cleaning or conservation. The problem isn’t that Indian children don’t know about trees. It’s that they are rarely taught why environmental crises happen, who pays the price for them, and what other choices communities could make.

Why Environmental Literacy Matters

India has a long history of institutional efforts on environmental education. Supreme Court rulings in the 1990s pushed environmental education into schools, and the National Curriculum Framework, along with subsequent policy measures, tried to weave environmental topics into the curriculum. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 places considerable emphasis on environmental awareness, sustainable development and responsible citizenship. On paper, the direction looks promising. In the classroom, that intent rarely survives translation.

A student may be told to conserve electricity, but is anyone explaining where India’s electricity comes from, why coal still dominates the grid, how renewable energy is expanding, and what trade-offs come with each alternative?

A child might learn that forests matter for ecological balance, but is anyone teaching them why the trees are being cut, who owns the forest land, what happens to the communities living in or around forests, how infrastructure projects reshape ecosystems, or how climate change itself is accelerating deforestation? A student may be told to conserve electricity, but is anyone explaining where India’s electricity comes from, why coal still dominates the grid, how renewable energy is expanding, and what trade-offs come with each alternative? A pupil may be advised not to waste water, but do they understand groundwater depletion, unequal access to water, the weaknesses in urban infrastructure, or the politics of sharing rivers between states?

These are fundamentally different levels of learning. The first produces awareness. The second produces environmental literacy. India needs far more of the latter.

The Environment Is Not Only a Question of Individual Behaviour

One of the deepest weaknesses of conventional environmental education is its tendency to place almost the entire burden on the individual: turn off the lights, carry a cloth bag, don’t litter, plant a tree, use less water. These are worthwhile habits. But taken alone, they carry a quiet suggestion — that environmental destruction is essentially a matter of personal carelessness. Climate change, pollution and ecological collapse are not happening because people forget to switch off a fan or reuse a plastic bag.

They are the product of energy systems, industrial production, urban design, transport networks, agricultural practices, consumption patterns and public policy choices. When environmental education stops at individual behaviour, students may grow into conscientious consumers while remaining unaware of the institutional and political processes that actually shape environmental outcomes. They should also be taught to ask who is responsible for emissions, and why a project is sited where it is. That shift — from moral instruction to civic awareness — is the one Indian environmental education still largely has not made.

Climate Change Is Already in the Classroom

The strongest argument for rethinking environmental education is that climate change is no longer a distant subject for Indian schoolchildren — it is already shaping their school experience. Extreme heat makes classrooms uncomfortable and undermines concentration. Floods and cyclones damage school infrastructure and disrupt attendance. Air pollution curtails outdoor activity. Water scarcity affects sanitation facilities, with a disproportionate impact on adolescent girls.

These effects are not distributed evenly. A private school with air conditioning, backup power and a reliable water supply absorbs climate stress very differently from an under-resourced government school. Climate change, in other words, is not only an environmental issue — it is also a question of educational inequality. A child sitting through a heatwave in a poorly ventilated classroom experiences climate change in fundamentally different terms from a child in a climate-controlled one, yet few environmental education programmes address that disparity directly. They should. Climate literacy needs to teach children that environmental issues are inseparable from class, geography, gender, occupation and access to infrastructure.

From ‘Save the Planet’ to Environmental Justice

Another limitation lies in how environmental issues are framed. Students are told they must “save the planet.” But the planet will endure regardless. The more urgent question is what kind of civilisation humanity will be able to inhabit as environmental pressures mount — and that is where environmental justice comes in.

India’s renewable energy transition makes this complexity visible. Solar and wind power are essential to reducing dependence on fossil fuels, but large-scale projects can also mean land acquisition, damage to agricultural livelihoods, and conflict with local communities. Protecting biodiversity matters, but so do the rights of people living around protected areas. Electric vehicles cut tailpipe emissions, but their batteries depend on mineral mining with its own environmental and social costs. Recycling eases pressure on landfills, but informal waste collectors often work in hazardous, unregulated conditions.

None of this is an argument against environmental action. It is an argument for teaching students how environmental systems actually work, contradictions included. A mature curriculum should embrace that complexity rather than flatten it.

Teachers Need Support, Not Just Demands

None of this is possible if teachers are left to carry the burden alone. Environmental education, where it exists, is often exam-driven, squeezed for time, and layered on top of an already heavy workload. Many teachers have no specialised training in climate science or environmental policy. Improving environmental education is, in large part, a question of improving teacher preparation and giving teachers the tools to connect environmental issues to subjects they already teach: geography can examine groundwater depletion, economics can study the cost of pollution, civics can look at environmental regulation, mathematics can work with climate data, history can trace industrialisation and land-use change, and language classes can practise environmental journalism and writing. Environmental education does not need a separate subject. It needs a different way of teaching the subjects that already exist.

The Classroom as a Site of Inquiry

Some of the most valuable environmental learning may not come from lectures at all. Schools can double as sites of inquiry. Students can take temperature readings in their own classrooms and study local heat patterns, check air quality where they live, map household water use, conduct waste audits, track the loss of local biodiversity, or examine power consumption and the potential for renewables. They can trace where their school’s waste actually goes. These exercises build evidence-based reasoning in a way no poster campaign can, developing skills in observation, questioning and analysis that are essential to understanding environmental issues.

Beyond Symbolic Environmentalism

Finally, what is needed is a cultural shift, not another annual ritual. Environmental education should be more than a photograph of children clutching saplings. A planted tree is visible; the systems that actually determine environmental outcomes — urban design, energy generation, water governance, waste management, industrial regulation, the distribution of climate risk — are not, and children need to understand them regardless.

India is raising a generation that will have to navigate hotter cities, strained water systems, shifting coastlines and difficult development choices. Telling children to plant trees isn’t wrong. It simply isn’t enough. The goal of environmental education should not be young people who appreciate the value of a tree, but citizens who understand how societies shape the environment — and how the environment, in turn, shapes society. That is the real difference between symbolic awareness and meaningful education.