Reading the NEP 05: The Holistic Degree
English

In many colleges this year,
a first-year student's course form
has one box for her own subject.
Five more boxes are for courses
outside it.
A father showed me his daughter's form:
chemistry, literature and water testing,
with an internship to come.
He asked if this is still
a chemistry degree.
Those boxes go back
to chapter 11 of the policy.
One sentence there asks for a student
who ranges across many fields
and specialises rigorously
in a chosen field.
Chapter 11 opens
with Takshashila and Nalanda,
and with an old Indian idea of a good
education as knowledge of 64 arts.
Those arts, it says,
included singing and painting,
chemistry and mathematics,
carpentry and medicine,
and the skills of discussion and debate.
The next paragraph says that joining
the humanities and arts
with science, technology,
engineering and mathematics
has consistently shown
positive learning outcomes.
It names creativity
and critical thinking among them.
This paragraph cites no study,
and the policy has no list of references.
And the major?
If she takes all those other courses,
does chemistry shrink?
The text does not say so.
Its sentence on breadth ends by asking
for rigorous specialisation
in a chosen field.
In the long term, it says,
all undergraduate programmes should take
this approach,
including professional
and vocational ones.
Engineering institutes such
as the IITs are to add arts
and humanities.
Students of arts and humanities will aim
to learn more science.
It then names 16 departments
that every institution should establish
or strengthen, from languages,
music and philosophy to mathematics,
economics and sports.
Our college has five departments
and no music teacher.
Where does my student find the rest?
Where a subject is not taught in class,
the same paragraph says,
a student may earn credit
for it through open and distance learning.
Every institution's curriculum is also
to include credit courses
in community engagement,
environmental education and values.
Its list of values runs
from truth and nonviolence
to scientific temper and citizenship.
And students everywhere are to be offered
internships with local industry,
artists and craftspersons,
and research internships with faculty.
In December 2022
the UGC's credit framework turned
these paragraphs
into the boxes on her form.
At least half the credits go
to the major and a fifth to a minor.
The rest go to courses
in other disciplines, languages, skills,
value-added courses and an internship.
In April 2025
that first number became binding.
UGC regulations now say
a student must earn at least half of all
her credits in one discipline.
In a three-year degree,
that is 60 of 120.
The other boxes rest on the framework,
and on UGC guidelines issued
between 2022 and 2024 for community work,
environment,
values and internships.
The community engagement course,
for example, is worth 2 credits,
with at least half the time in the field.
Guidelines carry less force
than a regulation.
Chapter 11 also asks for model
public universities of this kind,
at par with the IITs.
In July 2025 the Union government
counted 35 public universities,
each allotted 100 crore rupees
for that purpose.
So does all this breadth cost her depth?
Dinesh Singh, a former
vice-chancellor of Delhi University,
has written
that much undergraduate effort is wasted
on rote learning at the blackboard.
From 2010 to 2015 he ran experiments
there, giving students credit
for their own ventures.
In 2013, he writes,
three second-year students started
a company.
The policy, in his view,
puts knowledge into action.
Nandita Narain, then teaching mathematics
at Saint Stephen's College,
signed a teachers' petition in June 2022
against a mathematics syllabus proposed
at Delhi University.
It had 18 core papers in place of 16,
with 54 lecture credits in place of 66.
She asked how learning would happen
in fewer hours.
And in my own course,
this term, what should change?
Find out which box your course fills
on your university's list.
In an affiliated college,
that list usually comes
from the university.
Your course may belong
to a major, a minor,
or the courses open to every student.
That tells you who will be in the room.
If students from other subjects take it,
begin with what you take for granted.
An economics teacher might start
with opportunity cost,
and a music teacher
with how to hear a rhythm.
Then set one assignment
that needs a second discipline.
A history class could read
a village land record
beside a table of rainfall.
I can show her father the regulation:
at least half is chemistry.
Whether the rest is worth
her time depends on what we teach in it.
Chapter 11 asks for teachers
to have more say in that.
The full text
and our sources are linked below.
Next time, how long a degree now lasts,
and what a student takes
with her if she leaves early.