One-Year PG vs Two: Reimagining the master’s degree under NEP 2020

One-Year PG vs Two: Reimagining the master’s degree under NEP 2020 

Given the diversity of higher education landscape, both pathways may need to coexist for some time, allowing varsities to adopt models aligned with their academic strengths 

Rajlakshmi.Ghosh@timesofindia.com 18.05.2026

As the implementation of NEP 2020 gathers pace, postgraduate education is undergoing one of its biggest transformations in decades. Universities are introducing multiple pathways to a master’s degree — a one-year PG for students completing a Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP), alongside the conventional two-year master’s route for students with a three-year bachelor’s degree. 

The shift is aimed at aligning higher education with global norms, improving flexibility, and creating research-centric academic trajectories. Since India’s higher education system is currently operating within multiple parallel academic structures involving traditional three-year UG programmes, FYUP models, autonomous university systems, and professional pathways, experts claim that a one-size-fits-all approach will no longer work. In such a diverse environment, an overly rigid approach may create unintended inequities.

 “Traditionally, the master’s degree functioned largely as an extension of UG learning. Today, however, PG education is increasingly being viewed as a stage of advanced specialisation, research orientation, innovation, and professional preparedness. This transition has been shaped both by NEP 2020 and the changing realities of the global knowledge economy. Universities are now expected to prepare graduates who are multidisciplinary, research-oriented, globally competitive, and capable of adapting to rapidly evolving sectors driven by technology and innovation. The one-year PG model emerges from this context. It assumes that students completing an FYUP, particularly Honours or Honours with Research, would have already acquired substantial academic grounding, research exposure, internships, and cross-disciplinary learning during the fourth year itself.

 This distinction has also been formally recognised in the UGC framework,” says Prof Raghavendra P Tiwari, vice-chancellor, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda. Global Benchmarks Considering the Indian one-year PG is still at the early stages of implementation and the first FYUP cohorts are only now entering the pipeline, quality will vary widely across institutions. “The UK one-year master’s degrees work because they sit on top of rigorous honours programmes with strong final-year research component besides being backed by established universities. The Indian variant will take years to build comparable credibility. Until then, a two-year PG from a reputed Indian institution carries far greater weight with international peers and employers than a one-year PG from an average university,” says Ram Kumar Kakani, vice-chancellor, RV University. 

“The need for the oneyear master’s is not organically driven nor is it choice of central universities,” says Abha Dev Habib, associate professor, Miranda House, University of Delhi (DU) advocating the need for a 3+2 PG format which is structurally more robust. “NEP 2020 introduced a flexible 4+1 structure with multiple exit options for UG and PG degrees, but it also made the system more ‘porous’. The added fourth year has increased student numbers without additional faculty, space, or research facilities. Colleges now face higher teaching loads, inadequate student-teacher ratios, and limited capacity to support undergraduate research. 

Under the new system, students who complete the fourth year of their undergraduate programme are eligible for a one-year MSc. However, no additional infrastructure or funding has been provided to support this change,” she adds. Pointing to the larger picture, Prof Tiwari says, “The one-year PG is envisioned as a more focused and intellectually intensive phase where students engage with specialised domains, emerging technologies. However, the effectiveness of this model will ultimately depend on the quality of FYUP implementation.” Given the diversity of the higher education landscape, both oneyear and two-year postgraduate pathways may need to coexist for some time, allowing universities to adopt models aligned with their academic strengths, regional realities, and student aspirations.

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