30,000 students, 1,100 seats: Delhi University’s one-year PG rollout hits a roadblock
Delhi University is facing student protests due to a significant shortage of seats in its new one-year postgraduate programs. While 30,000 students have graduated from the four-year undergraduate cohort, only 1,100 seats are available for the accelerated master's pathway.
Why it matters
This highlights the implementation challenges of the National Education Policy 2020, where institutional capacity fails to meet the expectations set by new academic reforms.
With more than 30,000 students graduating from Delhi University’s (DU) inaugural four-year undergraduate cohort and only a little over 1,100 seats on offer across 46 one-year postgraduate programmes, several students contend that the promised progression from the undergraduate degree to a one-year master’s has not been matched by adequate postgraduate capacity, despite having invested an additional year in pursuit of the pathway.
Introduced for the 2026-27 academic session under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the pathway allows students who have completed DU’s Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) under the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework (UGCF) 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in one year instead of the conventional two-year programme.
The FYUP is intended to provide greater research exposure, including the option of a bachelor’s degree with honours with research, align Indian degree structures with global higher education frameworks and create a route for eligible students to pursue a one-year master’s degree.
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