NEP 2020 Mumbai University Faces Flexibility Crisis

The implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 at Mumbai University is exposing a difficult contradiction: the policy promises flexible learning, mobility between disciplines and multiple academic pathways, while students report that the systems meant to deliver those benefits remain difficult to navigate. Feedback compiled by the Bombay University College Teachers’ Union (BUCTU) after interactive sessions at 10 diverse affiliated colleges points to problems with mandatory training, academic credits, syllabi, examinations and the availability of honours programmes.

Taken together, the complaints are not about a single examination or one malfunctioning portal. They describe how a policy designed at the national level is being experienced through colleges, employers, university departments and digital systems that do not always appear to be working as one administrative structure. For students, flexibility is meaningful only when the institutions responsible for delivering it can coordinate schedules, credits, certificates, college transfers and assessment rules.

One of the clearest pressure points is mandatory on-the-job training (OJT). Students told BUCTU that employers often offered fewer hours than the prescribed requirement. Some students reportedly received no stipend, while others alleged that companies withheld completion certificates when they failed to meet marketing targets. These accounts place students in a difficult position: the training is compulsory for academic progression, but the conditions under which it is completed may be controlled by private employers.

BUCTU’s Madhu Paranjpe said students had questioned the arrangement and argued that universities and colleges should take greater responsibility for facilitating placements and ensuring that students receive the required hours and certification. Students unable to complete the prescribed OJT hours could fail and be required to appear for ATKT examinations, according to the report.

This makes the training requirement more than a curriculum design issue. It is also an institutional responsibility question. If an academic requirement depends on an employer’s willingness to provide sufficient hours and issue a certificate, students may carry the academic consequences of a process they cannot fully control. The reported absence of stipends adds an economic dimension, particularly for students who cannot afford unpaid or underpaid work while meeting college requirements.

The Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) was intended to support flexible learning by enabling students to accumulate and use credits across different academic pathways. However, BUCTU’s Tapati Mukhopadhyay said students felt that entry, exit and movement between disciplines or colleges remained almost impossible in practice. Students also reported difficulty changing colleges, disciplines or major subjects.

The gap between the formal design of a credit system and its practical use is significant. Credit portability depends not only on a digital account or a national framework. It also requires colleges to recognise equivalent coursework, maintain compatible academic structures and provide seats for students seeking to move. The feedback reported from Mumbai University colleges suggests that these conditions are not consistently available.

The problem becomes sharper when students seek to change colleges for the fourth year of an honours programme. Students said the fourth year was unavailable in many colleges. Those who did not plan to pursue postgraduate study consequently had fewer options to secure an honours degree. Moving to another college was also difficult because colleges had different structures and limited seats.

This creates a mismatch between the flexibility implied by the policy and the capacity available within the university network. A pathway may exist in the policy framework but remain inaccessible if the college offering it has no seats, follows a different structure or cannot accept a student’s accumulated credits. In that situation, the availability of choice depends less on the formal right to move and more on the administrative compatibility and capacity of individual institutions.

Students also told BUCTU that the content of major subjects had been reduced compared with earlier syllabi, while fieldwork and practical hours had been curtailed. They were concerned that the changes could weaken preparation for competitive examinations and employment. The reported distribution of credits was another source of concern: of 22 credits in a semester, as many as 12 were reportedly assigned to ancillary verticals.

Mukhopadhyay said students felt that the emphasis on ancillary subjects diverted attention from their core disciplines. The issue is therefore not simply whether a curriculum contains more categories of learning. It is whether the allocation of time and credits preserves sufficient depth in the subjects students rely on for further study, competitive examinations or entry into employment.

The concerns also reveal a planning problem within academic administration. Introducing new verticals and requirements changes the demand placed on classrooms, faculty time, employers, examination systems and student schedules. If the supporting capacity is not expanded or coordinated, curriculum diversification can create additional administrative burdens without delivering equivalent flexibility.

Examination administration has become another point of friction. Students reported multiple internal and external examinations, errors on the Samarth portal, incorrect absent markings and failure declarations that sometimes took time to correct. Some examinations reportedly lasted only 20 to 30 minutes, prompting concerns over whether students had enough time to attempt their papers adequately.

Digital examination systems are often presented as tools for efficiency and standardisation. But the reported portal errors show that digitisation does not remove the need for reliable verification, correction mechanisms and timely institutional response. An incorrect absent marking or failed result can affect a student’s progression even if the error is eventually corrected. Delay itself can become an academic penalty when admissions, examinations or applications depend on an accurate result.

The examination complaints also point to a wider coordination challenge. When a university manages multiple affiliated colleges with different academic arrangements, the same policy can produce uneven experiences. Students encounter the university through their college, examination timetable, portal account, teachers and placement arrangements. A weakness in any one of these interfaces can undermine confidence in the overall system.

The evidence supplied in the report comes from student feedback compiled by BUCTU, rather than from a university-wide administrative audit. The scale and distribution of each problem therefore cannot be established from the available material. The report does, however, identify recurring concerns across interactive sessions at 10 diverse affiliated colleges and attributes specific claims to named BUCTU representatives.

That distinction matters. The reported concerns establish that students have raised these issues through an organised consultation process. They do not, on their own, establish how many students experienced each problem, whether every college faces the same difficulty or how Mumbai University has responded to individual cases. Those questions would require university records, portal data, examination guidelines, placement documentation and an official response.

The policy landscape described by the complaints has several layers. NEP 2020 provides the broad framework for flexibility and academic mobility. Mumbai University and its affiliated colleges must translate that framework into syllabi, credit structures, examination procedures, honours pathways and student transfers. Employers become part of the delivery chain when mandatory OJT depends on them. Digital platforms such as Samarth become part of the accountability chain when results and attendance are recorded electronically.

This distributed structure can make responsibility difficult for students to identify. A training certificate may depend on an employer, academic recognition on a college or university department, and a result correction on an examination administration system. Unless responsibilities and escalation routes are clearly defined, students may have to negotiate several institutions to resolve one academic problem.

The reported experience also raises questions about the meaning of flexibility in a large affiliated university. Flexibility is not achieved merely by allowing multiple entry and exit points or by creating an Academic Bank of Credits. It requires real places to move into, compatible curricula, transparent credit recognition, sufficient teaching and practical capacity, and examinations that accurately record student performance. Without those operational supports, flexibility can become a formal promise with limited practical value.

For Mumbai’s students, the consequences extend beyond campus administration. Decisions about training, subject depth, honours degrees and examination results influence access to employment and further education. The concerns about unpaid training, withheld certificates and limited movement between colleges show how academic design intersects with household finances, time and future opportunity.

The central issue emerging from the reported feedback is therefore implementation capacity. NEP 2020 has introduced or reinforced a set of ambitious mechanisms, but their success depends on whether universities, colleges, employers and digital administrators can coordinate them consistently. The available evidence confirms substantial student concern across multiple areas, while leaving open the scale of each problem and the university’s formal response. The next important developments are Mumbai University’s position on the complaints, the mechanisms available for correcting examination and portal errors, and how colleges will provide OJT access and fourth-year honours pathways.

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