Stu­dents Bear Brunt of Policy Chaos

Deb­raj Mookerjee | 30 October 2026 | The Indian Express

The Four-Year Under­gradu­ate pro­gramme (FYUP) bears the twin bur­den of ambi­tion and ideo­logy. On the one hand, it is tight-jack­eted by a nar­row and determ­in­istic set of prin­ciples on how higher edu­ca­tion should be guard­railed. On the other, it is ima­gined as a stage where a decol­on­ised know­ledge sys­tem can be per­form­at­ively enacted to reori­ent future gen­er­a­tions into a cer­tain ver­sion of Bhar­atiy­aness. The former encodes com­pli­ance; the lat­ter seeks align­ment.

This news­pa­per recently repor­ted (‘The Fourth-Year Trap’, IE, Octo­ber 26) on yet another imbroglio involving the FYUP’S imple­ment­a­tion in the Uni­versity of delhi, centred this time on the prob­lems faced by fourth-year pass-outs who thought they had a last-minute ticket to embark the one-year pg pro­gramme, but were turned away at the board­ing gate. That report ana­lyses merely one symp­tom. The National edu­ca­tion policy (Nep), 2020 and its car­rier pigeon, the FYUP, are beset with a slew of prob­lems.

To blame the uni­versity and its offi­cials is to shrink the prob­lem into vis­ible tar­gets. The big­ger pic­ture is in fact older than both the Nep and the FYUP. It gath­ers shape from the Ambani-Birla report, the Report on a Policy Frame­work for Reforms in Edu­ca­tion, sub­mit­ted in 2000, and read­ily cham­pioned by Con­gress after it came to power in 2004. The report hinges on com­merce (privat­isa­tion and cor­por­at­isa­tion, higher stu­dent fees, and so on), pos­it­ing that edu­ca­tion ought not to be thought of as something that exists apart from the com­mer­cial interests of soci­ety. It also sug­ges­ted, per­haps even more troub­lingly, that higher edu­ca­tion should align strictly with skills, be depol­it­i­cised and attend supinely to the exi­gen­cies of the know­ledge eco­nomy. many crit­ics have argued that this older policy doc­u­ment segued into the Nep.

The present iter­a­tion of the grand design, infused with the extraneous demand for the cul­tural reori­ent­a­tion of higher edu­ca­tion, is a dif­fi­cult project. On the one hand, there is a desire to align uni­versity edu­ca­tion with the demands of the mar­ket, fore­ground stem-ori­ented learn­ing, pro­mote inter­dis­cip­lin­ary approaches, and even­tu­ally enhance the employ­ab­il­ity of stu­dents. On the other, there is the com­pul­sion to intro­duce gra­tu­it­ous course mod­els like the value addi­tion course (VAC), which really are, at best, self-learn­ing mod­ules. Addi­tion­ally, vari­ous courses have been made to bear the ideo­lo­gical bur­den of what is thought appro­pri­ate for inclu­sion in syl­labi. There is also a stack­ing of courses to build up quant­it­at­ive heft (lead­ing to the dilu­tion of a stu­dent’s core dis­cip­line). stu­dents need to secure about 45 per cent of their scores from internal assess­ment, which in turn leads to a mad rush to turn in work to obtain cred­its, minus any mean­ing­ful effort. mean­while, real effort at sharpen­ing the intel­lect with respect to the core dis­cip­line suf­fers.

Higher edu­ca­tion is most pro­duct­ive when it is untethered. It is not untrue that the fruits of research have fuelled the engines of com­merce. After all, we com­pound the words “sci­ence” and “tech­no­logy”, do we not? That sci­ence which fuels tech­no­logy must not, however, be con­trolled by the exi­gen­cies of tech­no­logy, if it is to be mean­ing­ful, cre­at­ive and most sig­ni­fic­antly, path­break­ing. Know­ledge forms where there is free­dom. On a ship you need strict sys­tems and pro­to­cols inside the engine room. pro­cesses are import­ant and neces­sary in cer­tain types of func­tions, and even in edu­ca­tion: stand­ard­isa­tion in grad­ing, well thought-out syl­labi, respons­ive admin­is­tra­tion, and so on. However, if you over-schem­at­ise edu­ca­tion itself, you make it lose its core pur­pose — to foster a love for know­ledge, and provide the envir­on­ment for the form­a­tion of new know­ledge (research).

The FYUP is burdened by arcane prin­ciples that con­trib­ute little to the devel­op­ment of crit­ical think­ing and ori­ginal research out­put. moreover, the over­load­ing of the pro­gramme with peri­pheral courses in the name of inter­dis­cip­lin­ary stud­ies res­ults even­tu­ally in the erosion of mean­ing­ful learn­ing, lead­ing to the accre­tion of little value via the addi­tional fourth year.

Regard­less of whether the Nep has merit or oth­er­wise (it works very well for engin­eer­ing col­leges, for example), its imple­ment­a­tion across India’s uni­versit­ies has exper­i­enced road­b­locks. guidelines and rules are often for­mu­lated after pro­grammes are star­ted, unclear rules of engage­ment leave teach­ers and stu­dents clue­less about require­ments and enti­tle­ments, fre­quent changes and exact­ing require­ments in the face of weak infra­struc­ture res­ult in cut­ting corners to meet timelines, and most dis­turb­ingly, stu­dents are insec­ure in the absence of clar­ity.

As a teacher with dec­ades of exper­i­ence, I try and make the best of whatever sys­tem is in place. I know how all of us have been bend­ing over back­wards to make the FYUP effect­ive, even when we have not always agreed with vari­ous facets of the pro­gramme. The reason should be abund­antly clear — we owe our stu­dents the best pos­sible edu­ca­tion, and they deserve no less. However, the con­stant stumbles, and the gath­er­ing mess that res­ults from each mis­step, have given cause for deep dis­quiet.

This article appeared in the print edition of the Indian Express (Delhi edition). Links will be updated if an online edition appears.