When flexibility becomes a barrier: The ground reality of NEP 2020

India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was introduced with ambitious promises — flexibility, multidisciplinary learning, academic mobility, and freedom of choice for students. It was projected as a transformative framework that would liberate higher education from rigid silos and allow students to shape their own intellectual journeys. Yet, for many students navigating the system today, the reality feels painfully different. Instead of flexibility, they encounter rigidity. Instead of mobility, they face institutional bottlenecks. And instead of opportunity, they often find exclusion.

Imagine a student who has consistently excelled throughout college. A topper at the University of Mumbai with a CGPA above 9, deeply committed to academics, intellectually curious, and well-versed in her field. But one day, during one entrance examination — the CUET PG — she underperforms. Perhaps because life intervened, as it often does. Family responsibilities, mental stress, relocation, uncertainty, illness, or simply the unpredictability of being human. In any rational education system, a single examination would be weighed against years of sustained academic performance. But under the present framework, that one score becomes decisive. Everything else — the years of hard work, the consistency, the academic rigor — suddenly becomes irrelevant.

This is not a hypothetical concern. It is the lived reality of many students today, particularly those whose lives are shaped by circumstances beyond their control. As the daughter of transferable civil servants, frequent relocations disrupted my academic preparation and created uncertainties that no centralized examination system accounts for.

When I filled out the CUET PG form, I had no idea that my family would be transferred to Delhi later that year. At the time, I was pursuing a BA in English Literature with a minor in History at Mumbai University. Had I known I would need to pursue higher studies in Delhi, I would have chosen differently while applying for CUET PG. But life rarely unfolds according to administrative timelines.

Today, despite having studied History extensively as a minor subject during my undergraduate degree, despite excellent academic records, and despite colleges informally appreciating my credentials, I am being denied admission to MA History programmes at the University of Delhi. The reason is astonishingly simple: I did not appear for the History paper in CUET PG. My academic record carries no meaningful weight. My years of study are secondary to a single centralised test.

This raises a larger and uncomfortable question: what exactly is the value of academic performance anymore? Why do universities calculate CGPAs, encourage interdisciplinary learning, and celebrate holistic education if none of it matters at the point of admission? A student may maintain a stellar 9+ CGPA across three years, yet still be denied the opportunity to pursue higher studies because of one procedural technicality. The contradiction becomes even sharper when the NEP itself repeatedly speaks about multidisciplinary flexibility and academic freedom.

For students from transferable families — especially children of government employees, armed forces personnel, and civil servants — the problem becomes even more severe. Every transfer potentially disrupts university systems, credit structures, registration processes, and academic continuity. Different universities follow different credit frameworks under the NEP.

Shifting institutions often means navigating bureaucratic chaos, unresolved equivalence issues, delayed registrations, and administrative limbo. The vision may sound elegant on paper, but the implementation remains fragmented and deeply student-unfriendly.

The most troubling aspect of this system is its growing dependence on centralised testing as the sole gatekeeper of educational opportunity. The CUET PG has effectively become a once-a-year bottleneck for access to prestigious institutions like Delhi University. One examination now decides academic futures irrespective of long-term merit or intellectual capability. This approach may simplify administration, but it does not necessarily improve education. In contrast, universities like the University of Mumbai still place significant emphasis on cumulative academic performance and departmental evaluation. Such systems recognise that education is not merely about performance under exam pressure but about sustained intellectual engagement over time. Colleges should ideally function as spaces that welcome learners, not institutions that mechanically filter them out.

This becomes particularly problematic in the humanities and social sciences, where knowledge cannot always be meaningfully reduced to objective multiple-choice questions. Literature, philosophy, history, and political thought thrive on interpretation, nuance, and critical reasoning. Yet students are increasingly evaluated through standardised MCQ-based examinations designed primarily for administrative convenience. In the process, subjective understanding is being sacrificed for mechanical efficiency.

At a time when artificial intelligence is rapidly mastering objective tasks and standardised information processing, human creativity, interpretation, and critical thought should become more valuable — not less. Instead, the education system appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Students are being forced into rigid evaluative structures that privilege speed and conformity over depth and intellectual individuality. None of this is to deny that reform in education was necessary. The older system had flaws, and the NEP does contain several commendable ideas, including broader curricular exposure and attempts at interdisciplinary learning. But policy cannot be judged merely by vision statements or official rhetoric. It must ultimately be evaluated by how it affects ordinary students on the ground.

And for many students today, the transition has come at a heavy cost. An education system should expand possibilities, not narrow them. Universities should not operate as scarcity-producing institutions where deserving students are excluded because they failed to tick the correct procedural box at the correct moment. Seeking admission is not equivalent to applying for a job.

Students enter universities to learn, evolve, and discover their intellectual direction. Systems that leave no room for unpredictability, mobility, or human error risk becoming detached from the realities of student life itself. The NEP promised flexibility.

But unless institutions begin valuing sustained academic performance alongside entrance examinations that promise risks remaining little more than an administrative slogan.

Ananya is pursuing English Literature in Mumbai University; Views presented are personal.