A group of university teachers and students on Friday criticised the National Education Policy as a document designed to “corporatise” education through the “excessive” use of online content, saying it would take higher education beyond the reach of the poor and marginalised.

At a news conference, Delhi University teacher Nandita Narain highlighted NEP initiatives such as the permission to pursue up to 40 per cent of any programme through the Massive Open Online Courses, available on the government’s Swayam website.

The University Grants Commission has issued regulations to make this possible and written to the universities to amend their rules to bring them in sync with the new system.

Further, the commission has issued a regulation allowing a student of a particular university to pursue up to 50 per cent of her course from another university, either online or offline.

Together, the two initiatives make it possible for a student to pursue up to 90 per cent of a course online.

“Online education cannot replace teachers. Nowhere has this happened. But the promotion of online education, being done according to the prescription of the NEP, will severely compromise the quality of education and minimise the requirement for teachers,” Narain told the news conference, organised by the CPIML Liberation’s All India Students Association (Aisa).

“Corporate (entities) are already providing online coaching, material and tutorials. The corporatisation of education will increase further.”

Narain’s comments came a day after the Union education ministry advised citizens to exercise caution while using the education products offered by ed-tech companies, which provide services such as online tutorials and coaching. (See Page 4)

An increase in the online segment of academic programmes is, however, likely to encourage students to seek help from ed-tech companies.

The 66-page NEP document, released last year, mentions the words “online” and “digital” nearly 90 times.

JNU teachers’ association secretary Maushumi Basu said that students and teachers must unite to fight the “commercialisation of education”.

Delhi University teachers Jitendra Meena and Ratan Lal said the NEP would lead to privatisation of education and a cut in grants to public universities, leaving students from socially deprived communities in the lurch.

Aisa has launched a 50-day campaign against the NEP, which will culminate in a gherao of Parliament during the coming budget session. Aisa will also take up a signature campaign against the NEP and protests on various campuses.

Aisa president N. Sai Balaji said that only a small proportion of students had been able to “learn anything meaningfully” during the pandemic, with its focus on online learning.

“The overall quality of education fell drastically at even the best of universities. The lesson is clear that any replacement of classroom teaching with online classes is an extremely flawed idea,” he said.