I have often wondered why we persist in putting knowledge into watertight compartments. A student is told that she is studying mathematics, economics, history or literature, and we expect her to remain within that enclosure. Yet the world outside the university has never been so obliging. The National Education Policy has sought to challenge this habit. Its emphasis on transdisciplinary and holistic education is not merely a reformulation of the curriculum. If pursued seriously, it can change the way a young person thinks about knowledge and puts it into action.
An interesting example of this is emerging from experiments under my oversight in Jammu and Kashmir. The initiative, “Design Your Degree”, gives students a greater role in determining their intellectual journey. Instead of accepting a degree as a package designed by somebody else, students can have a meaningful role in designing it, under academic and mentoring guidance.
I find this idea particularly rewarding because it takes us back to something we seem to have forgotten: knowledge was not always divided into the compartments universities have created today. Consider Panini. His concern was Sanskrit grammar, but his system was far more than a collection of linguistic observations. Thousands of precise rules interact to generate linguistic forms, displaying a formal structure with affinities to thinking important in modern linguistics and computing. Yet calling Panini a “computer scientist” avant la lettre would impose our categories upon a very different intellectual world. Similarly, Vitruvius, the Roman architect, did not regard architecture as separate from mathematics, music or acoustics. His work brought together ideas of proportion, sound and the physical properties of spaces. The point is not to claim that either anticipated modern science. They show that some of the most fruitful intellectual work happens beyond the boundaries imposed between disciplines.
This is where “Design Your Degree” matters. A student may wish to study mathematics alongside philosophy, data science alongside public policy, or literature alongside technology. Why should universities regard such combinations as intellectually suspect?
Climate change, for instance, is simultaneously a scientific, economic, political and ethical problem. AI involves computing and mathematics, but also philosophy, law, and public policy. Even designing a city requires engineering, economics, sociology, aesthetics, and an understanding of human behaviour.
Universities must seriously examine how to give students greater ownership of their education while retaining standards of scholarship. “Design Your Degree” therefore deserves attention beyond the programme itself. It asks a fundamental question: are universities designing students for the convenience of institutions, or are institutions designing education around the intellectual needs of students? If we can answer that honestly, the transformation envisaged by the NEP may cease to be a document on paper and begin to acquire a life within our universities. That, to my mind, would be a far more meaningful measure of educational reform.
Posts on X: @DineshSinghEDU
