The display of plagiarised innovation at the AI summit, Orion (a robot Dog) by Galgotias University, indicates a degradation of higher educational institutions alongside the privatisation of education. When called out for its plagiarism, the Galgotias University issued a press statement that clearly put the blame on the faculty. The event that should have pushed for a greater reflection within the academic community became a hallmark of passing the blame to the faculty. For the public discourse, the New Education Policy (2020) must address the lapses within the educational policy, most importantly, the conversion of university spaces into commodified realms, which is inadvertently connected to this act of plagiarism.New education policy (2020) and marketisation of universitiesThe New Education Policy (2020) is propagated as an innovative collaborative policy to ensure transformative changes in both school and higher educational institutions. With the introduction of NEP (2020), the state’s responsibility towards education has shrunk over time. The trend of privatisation of education started in the 1980s and picked up, especially with the opening of the Indian education market in the 1990s. The ‘light but tight’ regulatory framework of the policy has emphasised the lightening of the state’s duties towards education. The transformation of classrooms into corporate spaces and faculties into service providers is an outcome of the New Education Policy, which has emphasised education as a ‘special good.’‘Education,’ which is a subject in the concurrent list, requires cooperation from both the Union government and the state. However, the NEP (2020) has exceedingly focused on marketisation, commercialisation, and privatisation by replacing grants given to public educational institutions with loans. In order to fulfil the requirements of the loan, the private educational institutions tend to raise the fee. A Lok Sabha answer of 2026 indicates that the state legislatures have control over regulating fees in private educational institutions; however, a research by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration describes three categories of educational institutions, wherein semi-urban educational institutions (classified as Category-3) having an enrolment of 1000-7000 students tend to have an exorbitant fee structure along with several faculty members in ad hoc and visiting roles.The category 3 of higher educational institutions reports an annual hike of 10-12 percent which puts the education of marginalised groups at risk. Startlingly, various Lok Sabha answers reveal nothing substantial on controlling the irregular fee structure except the mention of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act 1997 governing such regulations.Universities as event-conducting laboratoriesThe advent of neoliberalism and the commodification of education have unduly pressured the academic community-faculty, and students alike to adhere to corporate dictates. These dictates have aimed at creating a mirage of what is promised versus what is offered. This has paved a route for emphasis on doing marketing and PR events to increase the visibility of educational institutions. Certainly, this image construction is more important than the faculties or academics who are a part of the educational system. To pass the bug to the faculty and calling her ‘ill-informed’ in this case is not something new. This has been observed when universities have distanced themselves ‘politically’ from the opinions of their faculty members.The pressure on fresh PhDs is more for conducting events that are of ‘market value’, rather than focusing on publishing and undertaking rigorous research. Having come from a background where dissent, public meetings, debate, and discussion were like bread and tea for academia, many PhDs such as me find themselves distraught in the system. This is the same educational environment that tends to push a certain mediocrity in research.What one sees in Galgotias is a proof of an academic environment that has been nurtured over time, an environment that has ideologically oriented itself towards a discourse of nationalism. The emphasis on events in public universities has focused on a certain ideological synchronisation. The recent incident of fallout from an academic conference at IIT is an example in this regard.‘Artificial Intelligence’ – A buzzword?There is little to no awareness of AI among Indians, according to a 2025 Pew Research Study. There should be no hesitation in admitting that AI is pacing more swiftly than a human’s ability to comprehend the same. Now and then, various public and private universities hold Faculty Development Programmes to train and adapt themselves to the usage of AI and how it can change the educational system. The concerning fact of all this is that AI is used anywhere and everywhere, ranging from college assignments to conferences. In such assignments, students often struggle to understand how and what is to be integrated into their writing.Galgotias incident is worrisome and dangerous on two ends – first, the faculty’s miscrediting of ‘Orion’ as a university-level innovation shows that misinformation is a way to hype the usage and application of AI. Further, the video shows the professor claiming that ‘Orion’ can perform a variety of tasks, such as surveillance and monitoring, which misses out on the ethical implications of these tasks. Secondly, the national narrative continues to be misinformed and glorifies the use of AI as ‘Aayi’ (mother) in all spheres of life. The integration of AI in education is ambitious and must be applauded in the educational policy; however, it is also crucial to understand what it means to integrate AI. The PR creating machinery within universities will rely on any such term in future without discerning its implications and impact on the larger society.The Galgotias incident is only a symptom of the larger problem. A problem beneath which there is lack of adequate knowledge on technology, focus on image building in private universities and most crucially, the incessant undervaluing of education as a service.The author has a doctorate in Political Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She writes on education, marriage, religion and gender. Her writings have appeared on The Scroll, IndiaSpend, The Wire, and The Newsminute.