When the National Education Policy 2020 landed like a promise—multidisciplinary universities, seamless credit transfers, multiple entry-exit, lifelong learning, Indian languages on centre stage—it felt like a long overdue reimagining of an ossified system.

As someone who teaches, writes about education policy too, and sits with students across campuses, I see both vision and vertigo. Five years on, the promise remains real but so do the frictions: in admissions, classrooms, faculty rooms and principal’s offices. The data tell an uneven story—gains in enrolment, but enormous implementation gaps that threaten equity, academic quality and faculty wellbeing.

To begin with,

The government’s All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) shows total enrolment moving to roughly 4.33 crore (43.3 million) in 2021–22, up from earlier years. Standalone institutions rose to 58,643 in 2021–22 from about 49,964 in 2017–18. These shifts are real, and they are the raw material of policy success. The Ministry has used these numbers to signal progress, and on paper, that progress looks substantial.

Yet aggregate growth masks the core problems NEP promises to fix.

The Gross Enrolment Ratio has inched to 28.4% in 2021-22 from 27.3% in 2020-21. To meet NEP’s ambitious target of 50% by 2035, we need an annual growth rate of approximately 4.7%. We’re currently averaging 1.5-2% annually. The math is unforgiving: at this pace, we won’t get anywhere close.

More troubling is what the numbers hide. GER remains uneven across states, disciplines and social groups. High-performing states achieved enrollment rates exceeding 95% by 2024, whereas lagging states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and West Bengal have GERs ranging from 16.0% to 28.7%. Secondary-school retention rates and the flow into higher education are weak in many geographies, which means GER targets require far more than tinkering at the margins.

Put plainly: counting more students into more institutions is not the same as making a transferrable, interdisciplinary degree meaningful or making graduates employable.

And,

One of NEP’s most radical operational changes is multiple entry and exit (MEE) and credit-based degrees. In principle, MEE should reduce dropouts and enable lifelong learners. The UGC and the Ministry issued frameworks and guidelines to let students exit with certificates, diplomas or degrees depending on credits achieved. But rules are one thing; implementation is another.

Colleges report administrative chaos: how to map credits across institutions, how long a certificate remains valid for further study, and how employers will interpret mid-course exits. According to figures released in Parliament, the dropout rate in IITs was just 1% in 2020. But with the implementation of MEE, this is likely to rise sharply—not because of academic failure, but because we’re legitimizing exits without ensuring re-entry pathways actually work.

The panel expressed concerns that implementing the MEE system in Indian institutions, while flexible in theory, may not align effectively due to unpredictability in student entry and exits. This unpredictability could disrupt the pupil-teacher ratio.

How do you plan faculty recruitment when you don’t know how many students you’ll have next semester?

How do you allocate resources when your enrollment numbers fluctuate wildly?

Faculty find themselves rewriting curricula into credit blocks—often without staffing, training, or systems to manage transfer and recognition. Admissions cycles also shifted unpredictably. Several universities experimented with blended admission windows, common entrance tests or college-level timing changes to accommodate new curricular structures.
The result: delayed academic calendars and students who started programs late, only to face compressed semesters.

Delays, in turn, ripple into internships and placements—many B-schools and firms still expect fixed internship months, and uncertainty pushes students to choose the safer, older routes. A reform that should increase choice is paradoxically shrinking practical opportunities for students during a fragile transition.

Less than 1% of colleges are registered with the Academic Bank of Credits as of 2024, indicating massive implementation lag. This isn’t just a technical glitch—it’s a fundamental failure to create the infrastructure that makes credit portability possible.

Faculty Under Strain—More Expectations, Fewer Resources

NEP asks more of faculty: design interdisciplinary courses, evaluate competency and projects, supervise credit banking and mentor lifelong learners. But staffing numbers and training budgets haven’t kept pace.

Consider the brutal arithmetic: according to a National Council for Teacher Education survey from 2022, only 45% of teachers feel confident in implementing NEP-aligned teaching methodologies. We’re asking more than half of our teaching workforce to execute a policy they don’t feel equipped to handle.

Teacher shortages persist; classrooms are swelling while the policy expects small-group project work. Faculty unions and teacher associations—for instance at large public universities—have sounded alarms, citing overcrowded classes, increased paperwork, lack of recruitment and inadequate funding to run the new structures. The protests are not just about pay: they are about the professionalism required to teach differently.

In a plaintive email last week, a colleague described weekends spent unraveling credit calculations for students—time taken away from research and pedagogy. “I came into teaching to mentor young minds,” she wrote, “not to be a glorified accountant for a credit system nobody fully understands.”

The shift to a multidisciplinary approach and the emphasis on innovative pedagogies require existing faculty members to undergo significant re-training and professional development. However, studies underscore that the shortage of skilled teachers, inadequate finance allocated to the education sector and inadequate infrastructure pose significant challenges to the successful implementation of the policy.

Consider simple arithmetic: redesigning curricula and shifting to project-heavy, assessment-rich pedagogy takes time. If an undergraduate department must now offer core disciplinary modules, multidisciplinary electives, and mentor internship projects for thousands of students without new hires, quality will fall. Students will receive shallower instruction in each subject; faculty will burn out. Where NEP promised to make the teacher the fulcrum of change, reality is exposing faculty as the bottleneck.

Students and Parents: Promise vs. Apprehension

In a classroom discussion last month, a student said to me: “Professor, I like the idea of studying across subjects, but I worry the piece-meal certificates will mean employers don’t take my diploma seriously.” This anxiety is not unfounded.

Many students are excited—multidisciplinary study is appealing, and the idea of a flexible return to study fits the nonlinear career paths young people imagine today. But students are also anxious.

Employers remain puzzled about MEE credentials; HR managers and recruitment panels prefer clean, comparable degrees.

Parents—especially those who invest scarce resources to send a child to a particular course—ask: “Will a two-year exit diploma hold the same weight as a completed three-year degree?”

Data show that employability remains a stubborn concern. Several studies and education think-tanks highlight foundational skill gaps—communication, numeracy—among graduates, which undermines NEP’s goal of making India a global education hub. Until industry and academia align on the meaning of credits and curriculum, students will face mixed signals—more choice without clear signals of quality or employability.

A 21-year-old who exits with a one-year certificate and gets a job paying ₹15,000 a month is unlikely to return. Economic fatalism is real in India—families need that income now, not after another three years of investment in education. The MEE system does not have the provision to ensure that the students who exited will join back.

Last but not least,

The elephant in every university auditorium is money—or rather, the lack of it. NEP 2020 calls for allocating 6% of GDP to education, but both Central and state governments currently spend less than 3% of GDP. This isn’t a new promise. The Kothari Commission recommended the same figure sixty years ago in 1964.

Six decades later, we’re still waiting.

In 2024-25, only 0.38% of GDP will be allocated to education by the Central government. The Ministry of Education’s budget saw a 7.6% reduction compared to the previous year’s revised estimate. Meanwhile, the allocation for the University Grants Commission saw a sharp decline of 61% in the 2024-25 budget. How exactly are universities supposed to implement sweeping reforms when their primary funding body has been gutted?

As of 2021-22, public spending on school education stands at 2.8% of GDP, reflecting a marginal increase of only 0.1 percentage point over the last decade. This isn’t incremental progress—it’s stagnation dressed up in policy language. Moreover, 15% of Samagra Shiksha funds remained unutilized on average between 2018-19 and 2023-24. It’s not just about allocation—it’s about effective deployment.

AISHE shows growth in numbers but not always commensurate investments for labs, libraries, digital infrastructure or counselling services. The policy asks for research universities and multidisciplinary campuses—but many colleges lack basic infrastructure to host such reforms. Expansion without matching budgetary commitment creates “paper universities.”

Structural Gaps the NEP Did Not Fix—And Sometimes Ignored

The Digital Divide: Limited smartphone and internet access—with only 30% coverage—restricts digital learning initiatives. Yet the policy expects seamless integration of technology, online components in courses, and digital literacy across the board.

Foundational Learning Crisis: Only 23.4% of Class III students in government schools can read Class II text, according to ASER 2024. NEP aims to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy by 2025—that’s this year—but we’re nowhere close. At the current pace, it may still take up to three decades to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy.

Teacher Training Gaps: NEP calls for teacher upskilling, but national rollout for large-scale faculty training—retooling teachers to supervise projects, curate online content and assess competencies—has been slow. There is a huge shortage of qualified teachers with good training, largely due to the lack of good District Institute of Education and Training. Recruitment freezes in many public institutions make it impossible to match pedagogical ambitions with human resources.

Regulatory Ambiguity: MEE, credit banks, and the three-four year flexibility demand a robust regulatory framework that recognises prior learning, cross-institutional credit transfers, and foreign collaborations. While the UGC and MoE have issued guidelines, universities still face legal and accreditation ambiguities that complicate admissions, degree recognition and international partnerships.

The School-to-College Pipeline: Higher GER targets are aspirational, but unequal school systems feed unequal college readiness. 70% of teachers in public schools teach more than one grade at one time and the curriculum is made for monograde students. Counting enrolments without strengthening the earlier pipeline will widen disparities.

State Coordination Crisis: 70% of universities fall under state Acts, and 94% of students are enrolled in State or private institutions, leaving just 6% in Central higher educational institutions. This means NEP’s success depends almost entirely on state governments’ willingness and capacity to implement it. States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu have opposed aspects of the three-language formula. Implementation varies wildly—some states have embraced it enthusiastically while others drag their feet.

What Good Implementation Would Look Like

If we must be candid: NEP’s goal is right—reimagine education for a century of rapid change. But realistic implementation requires three fundamental shifts.

First, funding follows reform. If multidisciplinary universities and research clusters are the priority, targeted grants—not just aspirational lines in the budget—must flow to faculty hires, lab upgrades and student supports. As one education economist notes: “When talking about allocation to the public education system, I don’t think even 6% would be adequate” given current ground realities.

Second, a national credit bank and clear credit portability rules must be codified with firm timelines. Experiments in a few institutions are welcome, but scale needs legislative clarity. We need transparent, real-time data on what’s working and what isn’t. Right now, we’re flying blind, making policy pronouncements without evidence-based feedback loops.

Third, industry-academia workplans must be co-created for internships and placements that reflect flexible semesters. Firms, regulators and universities must agree on internship windows and credit recognition so students do not lose out while systems transition. The multiple exit system creates certificates and diplomas, but will employers value a one-year certificate the way they value a degree? We’re experimenting with students’ futures without guaranteeing labor market acceptance.

The Real Question, Now?

I have seen a first-generation college student return to finish a programme she dropped out of five years ago because local credit recognition made re-entry possible. I have also seen a department bury a brilliant idea because there simply weren’t the staff to implement it. These small anecdotes mirror the macro data: growth in numbers, friction in systems, and anxiety in both learners and teachers.

Policymakers will ask whether NEP should be paused, recalibrated, or accelerated.

My question is sharper: Do we have the institutional patience and fiscal seriousness to finish the job?

If yes, we must move beyond aspirational targets to delivery metrics—not just more students enrolled, but credit portability implemented, faculty hired per student ratio improved, and measurable employability gains.

NEP should have been an invitation to co-create with stakeholders. Instead, in pockets the change has felt top-down: beautifully written policy documents, slow money, and frantic mid-course corrections by administrators. That is how reforms become “policy theatre”—impressive to read, hard to live.

Good intentions without resources are just expensive promises. We need honesty about timelines. If achieving 50% GER requires infrastructure and faculty expansion that will take two decades given current budget trajectories, say that. If teachers need three years of intensive retraining before they can effectively implement multidisciplinary teaching, acknowledge it and plan accordingly.

Count the students—yes—but also count the teachers trained, seats recruited, labs built, counselling centres operational, and internships guaranteed. Those are the performance indicators that will tell us whether NEP is a policy poster or a transformation.

The NEP 2020 remains a promising blueprint. But the difference between blueprint and building is money, time, people and honest feedback loops. Until policy ambition meets budgetary reality, until aspirational targets are backed by actual capacity building, and until we stop treating education reform as a document exercise rather than a resource-intensive transformation, NEP 2020 will remain what it has been for five years—something that reads beautifully on paper.

I remain an optimist. But optimism without implementation is just hope.

And our students deserve better than hope—they deserve a system that works.

Views of the author are personal and do not necessarily represent the website’s views.

Dr. Jaimine Vaishnav is a faculty of geopolitics and world economy and other liberal arts subjects, a researcher with publications in SCI and ABDC journals, and an author of 6 books specializing in informal economies, mass media, and street entrepreneurship. With over a decade of experience as an academic and options trader, he is keen on bridging the grassroots business practices with global economic thought. His work emphasizes resilience, innovation, and human action in everyday human life. He can be contacted on jaiminism@hotmail.co.in for further communication.

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