Hafiz Kasman walked away from the path-to-partner dream to confront a harder question: What value do universities really offer?

Hafiz Kasman had done everything right. The perfect resume, built through relentless effort during university. The coveted role in management consulting. The clear path to partner stretches ahead like a well-lit motorway. He was living the Singaporean dream, the one written into the social contract from birth: study hard, secure a prestigious job, stay on track.

Then he walked away.

“I gave up that stability — the entire trajectory of ‘path-to-Partner’ I had worked so hard to earn — just to start from scratch again as an entrepreneur,” he says. No safety net. No generational wealth. Just the conscious choice of risk over predictability. In Singapore, where the unspoken rules are as rigid as they are clear, this wasn’t rebellion. It was heresy.

At 32, Hafiz identifies with Gen X values — work hard, work smart — but what he’s broken isn’t generational. It’s cultural. “What I’ve broken away from is the idea that success has to follow a prescribed script. And in Singapore, breaking that script — that’s probably one of the boldest rules you can break.”

Rethinking universities

His company, Kinobi AI, exists because Hafiz noticed a question that universities couldn’t answer: what purpose do they actually serve? The question has grown sharper as tuition rises and faith in traditional education wavers. “More and more, people are questioning whether going to university is actually useful — for both education and employment,” he observes.

Is the principal value the peer network and environment rather than the learning itself? Universities pour money into facilities and academics, but employment outcomes tell a different story. With AI reshaping entire industries, companies are beginning to ask whether they even need fresh graduates.

Kinobi AI partners with over 50 universities to bridge that gap, deploying technology to help students find employment. But the work is consistently misunderstood. “The laziest assumption is that we’re ‘just a software provider’,” Hafiz says. His team consults, advises, and shares intelligence across institutions. What University A does well, University B might adopt. Mistakes at University C become lessons for everyone else.

He understands that the education space wasn’t the obvious choice for a tech startup — Hafiz knows this intimately. “Honestly, it was driven more by passion than by pure business sense.” The industry is punishing. Sales cycles stretch endlessly. Universities are hierarchical, risk-averse, and slow to decide. “So acquiring customers and building trust has been difficult.”

Sometimes he wonders about the road not taken. A different AI startup in a more dynamic industry. Would it have been easier? But the difficulty might be the point. “The longer sales cycle also means the longer we’re entrenched in our partner universities, the longer we grow alongside them. That creates stickiness. So, maybe the very challenge is also our moat.”

What keeps him grounded is constant interaction with clients. Career coaches, university staff, the people in the trenches. He’s visited over 200 campuses in three years. “These are people genuinely passionate about serving their students.” They see the results directly — a student coached into a good job, a family transformed by that success. Their joy pushes him forward.

The radical shift ahead

The future Hafiz sees is one that most people in higher education would rather not discuss. The existential question looms larger every year: Do universities still provide real value as they’re currently structured? “Many institutions can’t reliably get students into jobs or help them build sustainable career paths.” Industries demand new skills faster than universities can adapt.

He believes the transformation will be radical. Universities might evolve into hybrids where students spend half their four years rotating through actual jobs, learning in real time. “And this shift may come sooner than people expect.” Graduate numbers are plunging. AI is accelerating faster than anyone predicted. “My sense is that governments will act on this within the next decade, and the higher education system we know today will be radically different in 10 to 20 years.”

Hafiz broke the script once before, trading security for the unknown. Now he’s watching as an entire system approaches the same crossroads, forced to choose between evolution and obsolescence. Perhaps that’s why his choice to enter this difficult space makes sense after all. He’s drawn to the complex problems, the ones that matter, the ones where passion has to carry you through. “Starting from scratch, I believe hard work matters, and I’ll get to where I want to be again.”

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