NEP 2020's multidisciplinary push: why most Indian colleges still teach in silos

For decades the Indian bachelor’s degree ran on a simple premise: you picked a subject and stuck to it. Science students read science, commerce students read commerce, and the disciplines rarely met. The National Education Policy 2020 set out to end that model. It asked universities to become multidisciplinary institutions, where every course blends strands from different fields. Four years into implementation, the promise is clear. The delivery is not.

The University Grants Commission formulated the Curriculum and Credit Framework for Undergraduate Programmes (CFUGP) to make this real. Every degree now carries five pillars: a major subject, a minor subject from a different discipline, multidisciplinary electives, skill courses, and value-added components. A B.Com student reads economics alongside psychology and environmental science; a B.Sc. student takes communication and design thinking as credit-bearing courses.

What does a multidisciplinary curriculum actually look like?

The framework’s draft laid out a shared foundation before specialisation. The first year carries common introductory courses across natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, alongside credit-bearing components in regional languages, English, environmental education and emerging areas such as artificial intelligence and data analytics.

Specialisation deepens in the third semester, when a student chooses the subject they will study in depth. The fourth year - available only to students continuing to honours - carries a supervised research project in the major area. Community engagement, value-based education and skill components sit alongside the academic core, reflecting NEP 2020’s push to widen what an undergraduate degree contains.

This is the structure that institutions like Ashoka University and IIT Delhi adopted early, and that the journal article in The Research Frontline documented as a genuine cultural shift in academic governance.

Multidisciplinary education (NEP 2020)

Multidisciplinary education under NEP 2020 dissolves rigid departmental boundaries so that every undergraduate degree blends courses from at least five pillars: major, minor, multidisciplinary, skill, and value-added. Credits bank through the Academic Bank of Credits, enabling flexible exits and re-entry. The goal is graduates who can move between disciplines rather than specialists in one silo.

Can colleges deliver it on schedule?

The harder question is capacity. A multidisciplinary degree needs faculty who can teach across disciplines, course design that weaves subjects together, and assessment systems built for breadth - not the single-subject teaching model most colleges were built for.

BITE Varanasi, which transitioned in phases starting 2023, shows what implementation looks like on the ground. Its 2026-27 incoming batch runs on the NEP-aligned curriculum from day one: a B.Com student takes 50% major courses, 15% minor, 10% multidisciplinary, 10% skill, 10% value-added, and 5% internship or community engagement. Credits register in the Academic Bank of Credits, linked to each student’s APAAR ID and DigiLocker.

The Academic Bank of Credits stores credits for seven years, so a student who leaves after two years can return later and complete the degree. But that requires institutions to agree on credit equivalencies, a negotiation that single-stream colleges have rarely had to make.

The 2022 UGC guidelines gave institutions a roadmap: form interdisciplinary committees, redesign syllabi in common-first-year format, and train faculty in cross-disciplinary pedagogy. Compliance has been uneven. The 45 central universities moved first; state colleges with faculty shortages and legacy timetables have not.

Where does India stand in 2026?

The 2025-26 academic year marked the second wave of UGC-approved transitions, and the 2026-27 compliance deadline applies to institutions receiving central funding. But the pace varies sharply by institution type.

Tier-1 central universities and IITs have embedded the framework. Most state-affiliated colleges, which form the bulk of Indian higher education, are still in the design phase. The bottleneck is faculty breadth: a college with no philosophy or psychology department cannot offer a B.Com graduate the minor-subject requirement without hiring or cross-institutional agreements.

The policy’s logic holds. The implementation gap is real. Whether 2026-27 closes it depends less on another UGC circular and more on the staffing and governance decisions each institution makes in the next twelve months.

What multidisciplinary education promises for students

The student-facing case for multidisciplinary education is stronger than the implementation case. Graduates who have studied across disciplines are better at framing problems, communicating with diverse teams, and adapting to roles that do not fit neatly into one job description. Those skills matter in a labour market where automation is reshaping routine tasks and employers increasingly value learning agility over narrow technical mastery.

The Academic Bank of Credits is the student-facing mechanism that makes this promise concrete. By allowing flexible exits and re-entry, it reduces the cost of changing direction. A student who starts a B.Sc. in physics and discovers an aptitude for public policy can collect credits toward a future humanities degree without starting from zero. That flexibility is particularly valuable in a country where family pressure, placement drives, and social expectations often push students into courses that do not match their strengths.

Why governance and autonomy are the real enablers

Multidisciplinary curricula require cross-departmental decision-making. A university that wants to offer a joint minor in environmental science must agree on course content, exam schedules, and credit equivalencies across botany, chemistry, economics, and policy departments. That coordination is easier when the institution has a strong central administration and when department heads are incentivised to collaborate rather than protect their own turf.

State colleges often lack that governance architecture. Their principals may have limited authority to reassign faculty or redesign timetables, and their university affiliations may require approvals that take months. Early adopters like Ashoka and IIT Delhi have the autonomy to move quickly because they were designed with interdisciplinary governance from the start. Converting an old single-stream college into a multidisciplinary institution is therefore as much an administrative reform as a pedagogical one.

The faculty hiring and incentive bottleneck

Even when a college has the administrative will to change, it may lack the faculty to implement it. A multidisciplinary curriculum needs teachers who can run courses across disciplines—an economist who can teach policy, a biologist who can teach environmental communication, a computer scientist who can teach data ethics. Most Indian colleges hire within narrow subject boundaries, and promotion rules reward depth within a single department rather than breadth across them.

Without changes to recruitment rules, faculty incentives, and professional development, the NEP mandate will remain a paper exercise. Universities that tie faculty advancement to cross-disciplinary teaching and curriculum design are more likely to sustain the model. Those that do not will find that compliance is limited to renaming existing courses rather than genuinely weaving disciplines together.

Conclusion

NEP 2020’s multidisciplinary mandate is the deepest structural change Indian higher education has attempted since independence. It asks colleges to stop teaching in silos and start weaving subjects together. Central universities and early adopters have shown it works when faculty, curriculum and assessment align. For the colleges that still teach single-stream degrees, the shift is as much about culture as compliance - and culture moves slower than policy.