Reading the NEP 10: Skills, Vocations and the Professions
English

Our Hindi department must run
a skill course this term,
and its name is still blank
on the grade card.
Is that the policy,
or the university?
Both play a part.
Chapter 16 says vocational
courses will be open
to students of every bachelor's degree,
and your university chooses
the courses and how they count.
The same chapter wanted
at least half of all learners
in schools and colleges
to have had some vocational education
by 2025.
Chapter 16 starts from an estimate
in the Five-Year Plan of 2012 to 2017.
Fewer than 5 per cent
of Indian workers aged 19 to 24
had formal vocational education.
The chapter sets that beside 52 per cent
in the United States,
75 in Germany and 96 in South Korea.
Vocational courses had sat mostly
in Classes 11 and 12, the chapter says,
often with no route
on to a college degree.
They were also seen as inferior,
meant largely for students unable to cope.
The chapter asks for vocational education
in every school, college and university,
phased in from middle school onwards.
Colleges are to offer it on their own
or with industry
and voluntary organisations.
The Bachelor of Vocational Education,
introduced in 2013,
is to continue.
Colleges may also run short
certificate courses in skills,
soft skills included,
and are to try out apprenticeships.
Which vocations
a college offers is to follow
a mapping of skill gaps
and local opportunities.
The courses are also to carry lok vidya,
the vocational knowledge developed
in India.
The skills framework of 2013
is to be set out for every vocation,
so that what people have learned
at work can be recognised.
And professional colleges?
A nursing college,
say, or a law college?
Chapter 20 says professional
education should not take place
in the isolation of one's specialty.
Stand-alone agricultural,
legal, health science
and technical universities are to aim
to become multidisciplinary.
By 2030, institutions
of either kind are to aim
to offer both kinds of education,
alone or in clusters.
Field by field, institutions
teaching agriculture must benefit
their local community directly.
State institutions teaching
law must consider teaching
in English and in the state's language.
Every kind of health education
is to stress preventive health care
and community medicine.
And chapter 21,
on adult education,
aims at 100 per cent literacy.
Colleges could house
adult education centres,
and their members may volunteer as tutors.
By 2025, half of all learners.
Did that happen?
As of October 2026 we found no official
figure for the share of learners reached.
The one count
we found is nearly 35 lakh school students
in skill training,
in December 2025.
That covers schools only,
and is not a share.
In colleges
the change has come as credits.
The UGC's credit framework
of December 2022 asks
for at least 9 credits of skill courses
in a three-year degree.
An internship carries 2 to 4,
and each university chooses the courses.
Agricultural degrees follow
their own council,
the Indian Council
of Agricultural Research.
In September 2024
its committee of deans recast
the degree's first year,
adding applied courses such
as environmental studies.
Will students and their parents ever treat
a skill course
as the equal of the subject?
I doubt it.
The chapter says it aims to overcome
the social status hierarchy
around vocational education,
and to stress the dignity of labour.
Ravindra Kulkarni, vice-chancellor
of the University of Mumbai,
launched an engineering degree
with a year of apprenticeship built
into it in August 2026.
A degree by itself is no longer enough,
he said, as industry
and technology change.
Students also need hands-on experience
and the skills industry uses.
Krishna Kumar, a former director
of the National Council
of Educational Research and Training,
warned in August 2020
against vocational options from Class 6.
In India, he said,
the line between knowledge and skill
is sharp and deeply entrenched in caste.
Such options, he argued,
risk reviving old hierarchies.
And on Monday?
The Hindi department still has to grade
that skill course.
Your institution sets
the method of assessment,
so read its rules first,
and agree early with students
what counts as evidence.
For internships,
the UGC's guidelines name a logbook,
a report, and a presentation or viva.
Then find three places near
your college where your subject is used.
For commerce it
might be a co-operative bank,
for fine arts a weavers' cluster,
for literature a local newspaper.
And put one practitioner's task
into one unit.
Nursing students could write
a health leaflet in the local language,
and law students could draft one notice
in two languages.
There's a newspaper office three streets
from our college.
The Hindi department can start there.
Then the Hindi department has a name
to propose.
The full text
and our sources are linked below.
Next time, research for every university.