Building University Partnerships That Work

University partnerships are everywhere.

Most institutions today can show you a slide full of logos - global universities, industry partners, government bodies. MoUs are signed, announcements are made, and occasionally, a student exchange or guest lecture takes place.

But if you ask what’s actually happening underneath all of this, the answer is often uncomfortable. That gap between intent and execution is where this edition of Jetri Dialogues began.

To discuss what separates the two, we brought together two people who have seen this from very different vantage points:

• Nandita Abraham, Founding Dean, BITS Design School
• Dr Devireddy Devireddy, Chairperson, IACC (AP & Telangana)

What followed was a candid, sometimes uncomfortable look at what actually makes partnerships work and why most don’t.

Starting from zero: how partnerships are really built

The conversation opened with a simple question to Nandita:

How do you build meaningful partnerships when you’re a brand-new institution?

BITS Design School is only a few years old. Yet, it has already built collaborations with institutions like Aalto, Arizona State University, RMIT, and even Stanford Design School, which is famously selective about partnerships.

Nandita explained:

“We did not want to wait 60 years to create something or become something. It was important to have partners who were the best in the world, so that we could learn from them.”

As a new institution, they didn’t have legacy or institutional reputation. What they did have was a clear idea of what they wanted to become and how they wanted to get there. That clarity became their currency.

Because partnerships, as she put it, don’t happen just because you ask for them. They happen when the other side sees something in your ambition that aligns with their own. And that alignment doesn’t have to look identical.

“Every partnership has to make sense for both people. But it doesn’t have to make the same sense.”

This is where many institutions get it wrong. They look for symmetry — equal exchange, equal benefit. But strong partnerships are built on complementarity.

Nandita shared her POV:

“I think that every partnership has to make sense for both people, but it doesn't have to make the same sense. For example, if both people are good at the same thing, then maybe they don't need that partnership.”

What partnerships look like when they actually work

The difference between shallow and meaningful partnerships becomes obvious in practice. The best partnerships expand the world a student can operate in. As Nandita pointed out:

“It's important for every partnership to ask the question: how are the students going to benefit? Like, what's in it for the students? You can do it around anything, but at the end of the day, we're all educational institutes. We want to develop knowledge. What is the impact that it will have on students?”

1. Beyond the obvious: rethinking who you partner with

Nandita shared an example from her time at Pearl Academy:

“All colleges or all fashion colleges tie up with one designer or the other. And we said, "If you really want to make a difference, and if we really want to have an impact on our students, why should we not tie up with an association that has 200 designers in it?””

The difference was immediate. Students didn’t just get exposure to one perspective. They got access to an entire ecosystem in terms of the people they could meet, shows they could attend, and where they could showcase their designs.

2. When partnerships step outside the institution

Then came an example that completely shifted the frame - a partnership with Tihar Jail.

Students engaged with the inmates to discover the unexpected: many inmates feared leaving prison. Because reintegration into society felt more threatening than incarceration.

That insight led to a fashion lab that trained inmates in stitching and entrepreneurship. For the inmates, it created opportunity and gave them a pathway to dignity through their livelihood. For the students, it grounded their learning in reality.

3. When global partnerships become locally meaningful

Another example involved a collaboration between Northumbria University (UK), Dastkar, an Indian NGO, communities displaced near Ranthambore.

Over 6 months, students and faculty lived in these communities to study local craft practices. As a result, they came up with viable products. The outcomes were layered:

• local livelihoods were strengthened
• a new academic program in craft emerged at Northumbria
• students experienced what co-creation actually looks like

The uncomfortable reality: most collaborations don’t go this deep

If these examples exist, why are they still rare? Because there is a gap between what’s possible and what’s being done.

Dr Devireddy didn’t hesitate:

“I personally think industry-academia collaboration per se in India, given the scope, is very dismal.It can be a mountain, but it’s just an anthill”

1. Academic and industry cultures don’t align

Industry-academia collaboration has a structural challenge. While academia values depth, rigor, and peer validation, industry values speed, execution, and strict timelines.

With such a level of mismatch, what does industry want from academia? Dr Devireddy answered:

“Industry wants partners in crime. Industry wants to milk the academic brain. Industry wants young talent to be involved in it, which at a later point, they can also absorb into their organizations. ”

But, without someone bridging this gap, expectations break down and collaboration stalls.

According to Dr Devireddy,

“What is needed today is a strong layer in between. I will call it a program management layer, or a catalyst layer in between, in any collaborative project, which will bring the academic mindset and the corporate mindset to come to the mid-path, or you can say, we'll try to bridge them”

2. Collaboration vs co-creation

We often use the word “collaboration” loosely. But Dr Devireddy pointed out:

“The moment we stop thinking about collaboration or partnership, and start thinking as co-creation, the game changes.”

Collaboration can be transactional: a guest lecture, a project brief, or a short-term engagement. But co-creation is structural. It leads to shared ownership, problem-solving, and outcomes.

She shared an example of co-creation from Warwick Manufacturing Group. Instead of the industry giving problem statements to universities, corporate teams sat inside university labs with students and faculty members to build a product collectively. That shift is what makes partnerships meaningful. 

Why most partnerships fail even when intent is good

As the conversation moved deeper, the reasons for failure became clearer and more systemic.

1. Partnerships are treated as “extra work”

Partnerships are inconvenient for faculty because they are expected to do it on top of teaching, administrative work, writing papers and citations, attending conferences, and so on.

The question is, as Dr Devireddy points out, 

“Why should we consider it extra work, is my point. That should be part of the work..”

Nandita explained,

“Traditionally, all teaching and learning goes on without a partnership… A partnership is not something that is easy or convenient. There has to be a shared belief in what it is that we're aiming for and there has to be that extra person, extra time, extra energy to make it happen.”

Even when faculty are willing, the system doesn’t support them. They are evaluated based on tasks and not on collaboration, co-created programs, or student outcomes.

Dr Devireddy explained:

“So, what happens is, there is a partnership, and it's very critical. A few faculty are involved, a few industry people are involved, or another educational institution is involved. But this faculty's load is not reduced. How do you expect this to work? ”

2. Faculty are not part of the design

A question from the audience captured this problem from a different angle: faculty are often expected to deliver partnerships but are rarely in the room when they’re created.

Nandita’s response was unequivocal:

“You can’t push it down on anyone.”

To solve this problem, the faculty must be involved early. The partnerships must align with their interests and the ownership must be shared.

Nandita explained with an example:

“Everybody wants to work for some purpose, including our faculty. Why should they accept someone else, but if they believe that they can both work together to make something interesting happen, there can be a faculty of ours who works with craft and recycled material, and there's a faculty from the Arizona State University who works with recycled building materials. Now, maybe there's no… but now they're talking to each other. And that's quite amazing to find those opportunities.”

3. Partnerships depend on individuals, not institutions

One of the most common failure modes is a partnership that is driven by one person. So, when that person leaves, the partnership collapses.

Nandita suggested that the solution is distributed ownership.

“I think for something that has to last longer and definitely outlive any of the people or professors who are there, there has to be a slightly larger ownership. You can have someone administratively own it in terms of buying tickets and, you know, making sure that everything is ticked on it. But the soul should be with more than one person.”

What it takes to make partnerships work

As the discussion moved toward solutions, a few clear patterns emerged.

1. Build partnerships into the system

At BITS Design School:

• live industry projects are part of curriculum
• international collaboration is mandatory
• partnerships are embedded into learning

“We even have one module called International Collaboration. So every student in Year 3 must do a collaborative project with somebody from abroad. So in July, we have students coming in from Vietnam and three colleges in the UK.”

This changes partnerships from optional to essential and makes it a part of faculty’s scope of work.

2. Give faculty ownership

Instead of top-down mandates:

• faculty identify partners
• faculty design engagement
• faculty integrate it into courses

Nandita suggested:

“If it's compulsory that X amount of your credits have to be given by someone from the industry, the professor finds people. It's also his job to set the context right. So the responsibility then becomes the professor’s. He will support it, he will love it, he will make it work, he will boast about it, because it's his.”

3. Focus on a few, not many

Another audience question highlighted a common reality: institutions often have too many inactive partnerships. What is the best way to maintain them?

Nandita’s advice was simple:

“Pick your battles. If the leadership wants a website with 20, let them be over there, but find 3 or 4 that are going to be really good for the students.”

Keep symbolic partnerships going if needed but focus deeply on a few that matter. Because that depth creates outcomes. Dr Devireddy named such partnerships as “Game changers.”

4. Build ecosystems, not just partnerships

Dr Devireddy presented a powerful statement:

“It takes a whole village to raise a child.”

According to her, students nowadays need various different exposure. Because learning doesn’t happen in silos. So, to stand out as an institution, we need a lot of enablers to be part of the ecosystem.

Additionally, Dr Devireddy mentioned,

“So, it's not the infrastructure that makes an institution, it's the people. It's the people who come out of it, or who are still there and trying to do something for the society, trying to do something out of the box, trying to go climb Everest, trying to become an innovator in MIT Innovation Lab. These kinds of people come out of here when you give them a variety of experiences and at least an opportunity to meet and listen to people from various walks of life.”

The big question: can this scale across the system?

Can this shift happen across Indian higher education? Two perspectives emerged as the solution.

The push approach

Dr Devireddy argued for systemic intervention:

• regulatory mandates
• incentives for industry collaboration
• changes in faculty evaluation

“At a strategic level, if there is a change, automatically all institutions will wake up.”

The pull approach

Nandita disagreed:.

“I don't feel like something that forces you will make you really do something good. We'll be back to putting 20 logos and having many MOUs where nothing is coming through.”

Her argument: change must come from belief. If institutions don’t see the value themselves, the situation won’t get any better.

Where this leaves us

The problem is a lack of intentionality, ownership, and depth.

Because partnerships are easy to announce. What’s hard and what matters is everything that comes after.

• Designing for students
• Building shared ownership
• Bridging cultures
• Staying the course

That’s what turns partnerships from symbolic to systematic. And that’s what separates institutions that collaborate from those that truly evolve.

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