India’s 1st FYUP batch walking into a vacuum, risks wasting a year to complete master’s | Delhi News

NEW DELHI: At the Jantar Mantar protest in July, closely competing with anger on paper leaks was frustration about the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP).The country’s first and predominantly Delhi University batch to graduate this year under the National Education Policy (NEP)-mandated bachelor’s programme has enough reasons to feel let down.Shakshi Rao, for instance, couldn’t have hoped for a better start to college life after getting through to St Stephen’s College. Four years on, she risks leaving college with a regret and a setback. The regret, she says, is opting for the full four-year programme. The likely setback is wasting an academic year. That’s because the graduating batch is virtually walking into a vacuum.NEP’s four-year graduation is supposed to be followed by a one-year master’s. But this year, seats collectively available in Delhi’s universities won’t even accommodate 10% of just DU’s 30,000-odd FYUP graduates (all courses).The bigger idea of the fourth undergraduate year being a direct route to a PhD programme is yet to take root. Some institutions like IISc are doing it basis an entrance test and interview, but it’s still the nascent stage. So, most FYUP students face a stark choice — don’t do a master’s at all or waste a year and enrol for the regular two-year course.DU’s one-year master’s courses across 24 programmes have 2,565 seats (of which, 988 are in general category). Since these are reserved exclusively for DU graduates, the vacuum is worse for students from other universities.‘We were told fourth year will provide us research degree on a par with PhD scholars’Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the natural choice for top-rankers not just from DU but universities across India, has started a one-year master’s programme in just four courses that cumulatively have 71 seats.Ambedkar University has around 30 one-year master’s seats each in seven courses. Even for DU’s own students, the possibility of securing a general category seat is very low, particularly in high-demand subjects such as political science, history, English, economics, Hindi and philosophy.For all her academic accomplishments, Shakshi — who majored in political science and had economics as a minor — now feels an “uncertainty about my future”. The fourth year of FYUP, she says, was marked by “confusion” and an attenuation of interest. Graduation brought home the realisation that opting for the fourth year was a mistake. “I’ve applied for the two-year political science master’s as well because there’s no guarantee I’ll get the one-year. These are crucial years. I’ll basically spend an extra year to complete my five-year degree,” she said.Akriti, who graduated in political science from Maharaja Agrasen College, described her fourth-year research dissertation on transgender issues in Delhi University as “half baked”, one that lacked both in direction and guidance. “Our teachers told us the fourth year will give us a research degree and we will be on a par with PhD scholars but nothing of the sort happened. Many students used ChatGPT to write their dissertations,” she added.Vidhi, a graduate from Ambedkar University, said she has applied for eight different one-year master’s degrees in clinical psychology, including at colleges in Jaipur and Lucknow. “We keep being referred to as the ‘experimental batch’,” she said. “I thought that I would get an advantage because of the four-year programme, but colleges are selecting students who have already done a master’s in psychology for the clinical psychology programme,” she said.Samuel, who graduated from a DU college, was for-ced to return home and enrol for a two-year master’s at a university in Tripura. “I am wasting a year. People start their PhD in six years, but I will only be done with my master’s,” he said.Since the 2023 academic session, around 105 universities, including 19 central universities, have adopted it. More one-year master’s programmes will open up in the next two-three but getting admission into one is likely to remain a struggle because the number of FYUP graduates will also rise. Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, for example, will see its first FYUP batch of 1,500 students graduate next year. The university will start a one-year master’s next session but has not yet disclosed the number of seats in the course.DU professor Abha Dev Habib said the university should have announced the total number of seats in one-year master’s programmes well in advance so that students could make an informed decision on whether to go for the full FYUP or exit at the third year. “Had students known in their third year about the number of seats in the one-year programmes, they would have probably dropped out after that year,” she said.Habib said the way in which the one-year master’s programme is being offered is questionable. “It should be an independent programme. But currently, they will sit with the second-year batch of (two-year) master’s students. It just feels like the education system is not letting students grow properly,” she said.A retired DU professor expressed disappointment with the way FYUP has been implemented so far in India. He said students shouldn’t need a master’s after four years of graduation. “I don’t think people have any idea how the policy should be implemented. The whole point of a four-year degree is that a student should be so well equipped that they are ready to get into research right after graduation. It should only be a small cohort of students who are serious about research who should get into the four-year programme. But from what I see, students seem directionless,” he said.He said as an idea, FYUP is a great academic reform but the way it’s being implemented is like tokenism. “NEP says connect the curriculum through the real world… The universities should bring in new activities for students and change the methodology of teaching but nothing like that is happening,” he added.Defending DU’s one-year master’s intake, registrar Vikas Gupta said it is proportional to the regular postgraduate intake the university has each year. “For about 1 lakh graduating students, we have 13,000 seats in two-year master’s, so we are accordingly offering seats in one-year master’s,” he said. According to DU’s controller of exams, 30,000 students graduated in the first batch of FYUP this year.Gupta said apart from this, nearly 2,000 seats have been added in School of Open Learning to cater to those who miss out on regular seats. “This is the first year of any university offering a one-year master’s. Naturally, there will be a few hiccups. From next year, we will know exactly how to go about it,” added Gupta.An official from Ambedkar University said that it’s a learning curve for them as well and the university had done whatever it could. “We have seen huge interest in our one-year programme. Seats are currently at overcapacity,” the official said.