The revised undergraduate curriculum, as crafted by the University Grants Commission ~ the regulatory entity ~ will serve to dilute the Honours subject or the principal discipline for graduate studies.

In an attempt to effect compromised studies, it has been proposed that barely 30 per cent of a student’s course-content will have a bearing on the subject of specialization, verily plummeting from the current 73 per cent. The quality of undergraduate studies will be severely impaired by this breathless tinkering with syllabi. The fresh graduates who will step out of the campuses will lack in-depth knowledge of their chosen discipline, to say nothing of acquiring scholarly rigour after spending hours in the library.

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The UGC has sought feedback from the stakeholders by 4 April. The proposals urgently call for reflection by both the teachers and the taught across the country’s undergraduate institutions. Well might a section of teachers welcome the truncated syllabi; the students will do so at their peril. More disingenuous methods to cut corners in academics will be hard to find. As Abha Dev Habib, a teacher in Delhi’s Miranda House College has pointed out, “The proposed curriculum will militate against gaining knowledge in depth. The degree course will be deficient in rigour.”

The UGC’s plan of action envisages a marked emphasis on general rather than specialized learning. There can be no dispute with the prescription that students of all streams must study certain common courses in the first three semesters. The common courses, as envisaged, will range from environmental science to yoga education, sports and fitness. The course content has already raised hackles even at the level of academics.

Very pertinently has it been pointed out that students will spend three semesters learning things that they have learnt in school. In point of fact, the Honours subject has been accorded an astonishingly minor rating in the overall construct. Not before the third semester will the students be taught the Honours subject, a discipline that is reinforced at the post-graduate level. At present, the Honours subject is taught from the first year and the eight papers for the first and second or third parts are equally divided.

The two “pass” subjects usually complement the Honours subject. To reinforce the stress on general studies, the draft curriculum earmarks 27 credits for additional and elective subjects under three compulsory heads ~ natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Going by this matrix, a student with physics as his Honours subject, and having studied several common courses, will again have to study social science and humanities subjects to gain the required number of credits.

The disciplines are bound to overlap with the Honours and “Pass” subjects. There can be no one size-fits all formula in higher studies. There seems little rationale for the proposed changes.