DU rolls out one-year master's in 8 departments amid NEP shift

Delhi University's Academic Council has endorsed key reforms reshaping postgraduate programs, research standards, and student options amid NEP 2020 implementation, chaired by Vice-Chancellor Prof Yogesh Singh during its 1026th meeting.

These changes support the four-year undergraduate program's first graduates by launching one-year postgraduate courses in line with the Postgraduate Course Framework 2024.

Departments such as Philosophy, Hindi, English, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Journalism & Mass Communication, including the Master of Journalism and Mass Communication under the Faculty of Social Sciences, will offer these shorter routes for qualifying students.

The council tackled research publication hurdles raised by Social Sciences and language faculty, who face scarce Scopus-indexed journals.

Singh instructed all departments to compile lists of their top 20 journals within 30 days, complete with evaluation criteria, scoring systems, and ranked choices to establish uniform benchmarks.

Specialized approvals covered medical and education fields. Lady Hardinge Medical College will start a DM in Pediatric Nephrology, and Maulana Azad Medical College a DM in Medical Genetics, each with 2 seats annually.

Maharishi Valmiki College of Education gained clearance for a two-year M.Ed. program with 50 seats from the 2026-27 session, pending faculty hires and accreditation renewal.

The council renamed the Research Council as the Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Council to emphasize practical applications beyond traditional scholarship.

From the 2027-28 session, the School of Open Learning and the Centre for Open Learning received in-principle nods for new undergraduate and postgraduate programs in English, Commerce, Computer Science, and Multimedia, plus an MBA and foreign language diplomas in European and Asian tongues. These will span offline, ODL, and online formats once infrastructure is ready.

Discussions highlighted the Semester Away Program under UGCF-2022, enabling students to study one semester abroad with credits transferable to their DU degree, as long as courses do not duplicate existing ones.

Registrar Dr Vikas Gupta, while presenting the agenda, noted that such measures reflect a gradual shift in higher education, where institutional boundaries are becoming less rigid and students are being given greater flexibility to navigate their academic journeys across different formats and locations.