Researchers, teachers, and graduate students in Mathematics and related disciplines have expressed concerns about the UGC draft curriculum for Mathematics, 2025. "It is riddled with grave defects, and if adopted, will damage the prospects of generations of students", they say in a petition to withdraw the UGC draft curriculum 2025 for Mathematics B.Sc./B.A.
Nealry a thousand experts have signed the petition urging the UGC to withdraw this draft and form a new committee consisting of expert mathematicians and teachers of undergraduate Mathematics to redraft the curriculum.
Among many points of contestation, they flag that the topics that should form the bedrock of the UG curriculum, such as real analysis, linear algebra, and algebra, are inadequately covered. Algebra is crammed into one semester, and real analysis is introduced so late that it does not leave room for natural subsequent courses to be offered.
The group also objects to the undue weightage given to courses like Analytical Geometry and Mechanics, which they say are obsolete and a legacy of the British system of education. "Applied Mathematics is short-changed; programming and numerical methods are outside the core. Statistics is stuffed into one course. In courses on Statistics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, etc., it is natural and customary to have a practical and application-based component; this opportunity has been squandered", the petition says.
The group of experts also notes that many elective courses that have been prescribed require an understanding of topics that have not been taught in basic courses. The petition elaborates on this point with the example of Mathematics in Music, which they say claims to require only Class-10 Mathematics. "But the content includes Fourier analysis and Markov chains (which cannot even be taught at that stage). Fundamental concepts of sets, functions, and vector spaces are being taught in Mathematics for Machine Learning, which does not do justice either to these concepts or to machine learning (which has only 15 hours left)", says the petition.
Those that signed the petition also emphasise that teachers and students lack the required background for the teaching and learning of certain courses. They say, "Some of the courses on Mathematics in other disciplines, for instance, Physics, Chemistry, Life Sciences, have the pitfall that most Mathematics teachers do not know how to teach such courses, such as Quantum Mechanics, and students do not have the background needed to understand such courses".
The petition says, "Mathematics in arts subjects (music, drama, arts) has similar problems, only more serious as they are farther from the expertise of most mathematics teachers. Yet other courses, such as Mathematics in Meditation, do not belong in a UG Mathematics curriculum".
The petitioners say that the value-added courses, fourteen of them, which are supposed to prepare the students for the modern workforce (according to the NEP), do no such thing. They are poorly conceived courses in history. Most of these courses have no content beyond high-school Mathematics.
The group of experts also points that the draft curriculum does not prepare a student to pursue an M.Sc., let alone a Ph.D. or a job in industry. "The inadequacy of the courses is all the more glaring because a student graduating after four years is eligible to write the NET exam and qualify for a Ph.D", the petition says.
The petitioners say the problem is beyond just defects in the course design. "In multiple courses, the given references do not exist! For instance, the books of Rudin (Mathematics in Physics), Karlin and Taylor (Mathematical Psychology), Glenn Ledder (Mathematics in Sustainability), Mirabai Starr (Mathematics in Meditation), Myers and Henson (Mathematical Psychology)", they say.
The petition says, "A nation with a long tradition of excellence in mathematics deserves a much better undergraduate curriculum. Our purpose in making this petition is identical to the goals of the UGC: giving future generations of Indian students the best education possible".