Education reforms fail in two ways. Some fail loudly, others disappear quietly. When an examination system fails, the damage is loud and visible. When a university reduces reform to revised regulations, new course structures, or redesigned credit tables, no alarm sounds. Students still graduate, and compliance reports are still submitted, yet something important is lost: the opportunity to become a fundamentally different institution.
As the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 completes six years, the debate can no longer be about how many universities have adopted the policy. India must now ask a more consequential question: Have universities interpreted its philosophy deeply enough to redesign themselves?
A national policy should provide a common direction, not produce identical universities. This, perhaps, is NEP's most underappreciated contribution. It offers a set of educational principles--multi-disciplinarity, flexibility, autonomy, research, and internationalisation--and leaves institutions free to give those principles their own academic meaning.
Indeed, one measure of NEP's success should be that India's best universities become more distinct from one another, not less, because each has interpreted the same philosophy differently and can explain why. The next phase of NEP, therefore, demands three acts of institutional interpretation.
Multi-disciplinarity is often mistaken for curricular diversity. A science student studies philosophy, a management student takes psychology, and the requirement appears fulfilled. The real ambition, however, is far more profound.
{{/usCountry}}Multi-disciplinarity is often mistaken for curricular diversity. A science student studies philosophy, a management student takes psychology, and the requirement appears fulfilled. The real ambition, however, is far more profound.
{{/usCountry}}The challenges that define this century--Artificial Intelligence (AI), the climate crisis, public health, demographic change, and sustainability--do not arrive as disciplinary problems. They demand scientific understanding, technological literacy, economic reasoning, ethical judgment, and an appreciation of human behaviour, often simultaneously. The question, therefore, is not whether students study multiple disciplines; it is whether universities produce graduates capable of connecting them.
Indian universities are already offering different answers. Ashoka University interprets multi-disciplinarity through a common intellectual foundation. Every undergraduate completes foundation courses spanning critical thinking, literature, science, mathematical reasoning, environmental studies and society before and alongside disciplinary depth.
Ahmedabad University begins elsewhere. Its foundation programme organises learning around themes such as water, climate and democracy, making contemporary problems--not academic departments--the organising principle of education. Neither model is the NEP model; both are legitimate interpretations of the same educational philosophy.
AI makes this reinterpretation even more urgent. The university's response cannot simply be another AI course, because technologies will evolve faster than curricula. The enduring responsibility of higher education is to cultivate judgment, synthesis, ethical reasoning, and the ability to ask worthwhile questions. Assessment must, therefore, evolve as well, rewarding the framing of problems, evaluation of evidence, defense of decisions, and responsible use of AI--not merely the reproduction of information.
The future graduate may not have one career for a lifetime, but a lifetime of careers. Multi-disciplinarity should prepare people for that reality.
NEP's provisions on flexibility are frequently understood through multiple entry and exit, credit transfer and the Academic Bank of Credits. These are important mechanisms, but they are not the philosophy. The larger idea is that learners should reach professional aspirations through different intellectual journeys—and revise those journeys as their interests and opportunities evolve.
Prestige University, Indore's Multi-Path Learning Opportunities (MPLO) framework represents one such interpretation. Linear Integrated Master's Programmes enable progression within related domains, while Cross-Integrated Master's Programmes allow students to move from one undergraduate discipline towards a different professional destination at the postgraduate level. Exploration precedes consolidation. The distinction is important. Optionality offers several choices at admission; flexibility allows the journey itself to change. A decision taken immediately after school should not permanently determine an individual's professional future.
As careers become increasingly non-linear, universities must become institutions to which learners repeatedly return--not places they visit only once. The question, therefore, is not whether universities offer flexibility, but whether their flexibility genuinely keeps futures open.
Perhaps NEP's most ambitious invitation is also its least discussed. It quietly asks universities to reconsider what kind of institution they want to become. A university should no longer see itself principally as a provider of courses and degrees; it must increasingly function as a knowledge ecosystem--creating ideas, mentoring inquiry, solving problems, and contributing to society.
That begins with faculty. Faculty members are not simply deliverers of approved curricula; they are creators of knowledge, mentors of curiosity, and architects of intellectual communities. Faculty development must, therefore, move beyond periodic training towards enabling interdisciplinary teaching, new forms of assessment, meaningful research, and responsible engagement with technologies and practice.
Governance must evolve similarly. Constituting NEP committees is easy; creating institutional cultures that encourage academic experimentation is considerably harder. Ashoka University's Centre for Economic Data and Analysis illustrates one interpretation of this wider public role. By transforming socio-economic data into accessible public resources, it treats knowledge not only as an academic output but as civic infrastructure.
Internationalisation also deserves reinterpretation. For too long, it has been measured by mobility and memoranda of understanding. In a world of geopolitical uncertainty and changing migration regimes, universities should increasingly build shared intellectual capacity through joint research, co-teaching, shared datasets, and collaborative problem-solving. The success of an international partnership should not be measured by how many students crossed borders, but by what participating universities became capable of creating together.
The question, therefore, is not whether a university produces knowledge. It is whether it creates knowledge ecosystems that society values.
The first phase of NEP could reasonably be measured through adoption: revised curricula, flexible regulations, digitised credits, and new academic structures.
The next phase requires different questions. Can graduates integrate knowledge when confronting complex problems? Can students change direction without discarding years of learning? Can learners return throughout their careers? Does research reshape teaching and society? Has autonomy produced distinctive institutions rather than standardised compliance? These questions do not replace employability, research output, innovation, or credit mobility; they give those measures educational meaning.
NEP has already been written. The next chapter of the Indian university is still being written. Its quality will depend not on how uniformly institutions implement the policy, but on how imaginatively they interpret it. That, more than any regulation, will determine the legacy of NEP.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Keyoor Purani, vice chancellor, Prestige University, Indore.