Assessment of India's New Education Policy 2020 on Skill Development and Graduate Employability

Abstract

Education is vital to the development of human potential and to the building of an equal society. But universal access to excellent education has to be expanded to sustain India’s economic progress, social fairness and equality. The New Education Policy (NEP) was introduced in  2020 and aimed to develop and  revolutionize Indian higher education so that learning is in sync with the skill needs of the twenty-first-century workforce.  This is a policy evaluation paper that presents a field study conducted in 2025, five years after the implementation of NEP reforms, offering a multi-stakeholder perspective. The research assessed the perceived impact of the policy on skill development and work preparation using primary data from 122 stakeholders: 56 students, 52 faculty members, and 14 industry recruiters. Data were obtained using structured questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Awareness of the policy was high: 91.1% of students were aware of NEP 2020, and 98.1% of institutions reported official implementation actions. But only 28.6% of students received any formal orientation, and only about half participated in skill development classes. Faculty indicated broad uptake of transdisciplinary education and vocational courses but cited infrastructure, financing and capability as hindrances to implementation. Recruiters ranked graduates' digital literacy and technical knowledge as relatively high, but ranked communication skills and industry exposure as the lowest qualities. Eight of the 14 recruiters said the quality of graduates has neither improved nor worsened since 2020. The results demonstrated an evident disparity between the execution of policy goals and students’ experiences, as well as between students' experiences and employers’ expectations, and recommended strengthening experiential learning, co-designing curricula with industry, investing in continuous faculty development, and expanding career support services to improve graduate employability.