5 min readOct 29, 2026 03:29 PM IST First published on: Oct 29, 2026 at 03:15 PM ISTThis newspaper recently reported (‘The Fourth-Year Trap’, IE, October 26) on yet another imbroglio involving the implementation of FYUP (Four-Year Undergraduate Programme) in the University of Delhi, centred this time on the problems faced by those fourth-year pass-outs who thought they had a last-minute ticket to the one-year PG programme, but were turned away at the boarding gate. That ticket was part of the hard sell that has surrounded FYUP, which has included a slew of offers and incentives to make it work. Hard-selling without the inventory to back up what’s being offered results in irate customers. Many students who have been denied admission to the one-year PG course based on priority parameters set by the university have moved the courts seeking relief.The FYUP problem is entangled with the larger story around the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Regardless of whether NEP has merit or otherwise (it works very well for engineering colleges, for example), its implementation across India’s universities has experienced roadblocks; continual attempts at steadying the project have led to further complications. 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.AdvertisementAlso Read | With Four-Year Undergraduate Programme, students have more options and opportunitiesAt the heart of the problem is the big picture, which, to my mind, is not as big as it is made out to be. To blame the university and its officials is to shrink the problem into visible targets. Moreover, the problem is “secular”, as it were. It begins with 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 (recall FYUP version 1.0 under then HRD minister Kapil Sibal). It hinged on commerce (privatisation and corporatisation, higher student fees, and so on, which this piece will not dwell 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 the older policy has segued into NEP 2020.The present iteration of the grand design, infused with the extraneous demand for the cultural reorientation of higher education, attempts to present the “bigger picture” in its entirety. However, it ends up underscoring the inherent contradictions that plague the higher education ecosystem. 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 VAC (value addition course), 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.AdvertisementThe 2000 report sought to push Indian education forward to meet the demands of an emergent world order (the age of communication and the ascendancy of knowledge-based societies). 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 thereby to the accretion of little value via the additional fourth year.you may likeAs a teacher with decades of experience, I try to make the best of whatever system is in place. I know how all of us have been bending over backwards to make FYUP effective, even when we have not always agreed with various facets of the programme. The reason behind this 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.The purpose of higher education is to nurture thinking individuals who know how to ask the right questions premised on critical thinking ability, and are capable of producing knowledge; currently, under FYUP, we are training young citizens to merely become more efficient consumers of knowledge, and only just.The writer teaches at Ramjas College, University of Delhi