In the last article, we discussed some of the major implementation points of NEP 2020 at school level. We also deliberated on the constraints & challenges and the reasons why the pace of implementation is not at the desired level. The same reasons are also applicable for higher education. This includes huge diversity in the nature, type and location of the universities & colleges in India. And the results on the ground are visible that the speed of implementation is slow, in bits & pieces and lacks a holistic approach. Many of the milestones recommended in the policy are yet to be achieved. Some of the suggestions have seen light of the day in some states while some others are lagging because of political reasons.

This not to say that nothing has been achieved. The central as well as some of the state governments have started implementing at least some of the “least resistance” steps. Some important developments in this regard are given below:

Structural and Curricular Aspects: In the central universities and some state and other types of universities, the “4-year graduation program” has been launched. There are lots debates on the type of curriculum for each of the 4 years and some developments have started taking place like offering “choice-based electives”, some migration towards “liberal education” (by offering completely different types of course like drawing / painting / photography, etc. to engineering or commerce students, among others), launch of “academic bank of credit (ABC)” by opening accounts of students, etc. In some universities, guidelines have been issued to allow the 3-year students to migrate to 4^th year in case some students want to continue with the 4-year course. The actual inflection points of theses steps will be felt after a few years when an assessment can be made whether these were correctly implemented or not. The other important development has been that even the established “single disciplinary” institutes like IITs have started becoming “multi-disciplinary” which is at the heart of NEP recommendations. However, to make things happen in this area of recommendation, the country needs a larger pool of “diverse faculty” that does not exist at this point of time.

Governance Domain: There has been some progress In this context by giving different types of autonomy to different categories of colleges. The autonomous colleges have lots of flexibility / autonomy in terms of offering new courses and fixing fees. The guidelines for “institutional developmental plan (IDP)” have been framed by the UGC and circulated to institutions. This will certainly help the HEIs to develop their strategic long-term plans in a more structured manner.

National Research Foundation (NRF): Here also there has been some progress. The NRF Bill 2023 has been approved by both house of Parliament in 2023 and is likely to see light of the day after the new government takes over. It will provide a big boost to creating single-point research body at the apex level aimed to foster a research culture in Indian academia.

By Dr A K Sen Gupta, Founder and Convener, Higher Education Forum (HEF). He is former Director of SIES College of Management Studies (SIESCOMS), Navi Mumbai and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai. He may be contacted at aksengupta51@gmail.com or 9821128103.