The Delhi High Court's recent verdict, which states that no law student in India should be barred from exams due to insufficient attendance, has ignited a crucial debate about the foundational principles of higher education. Delivered in November 2025, this ruling challenges long-standing academic norms and brings to the fore pressing questions about discipline, stress, and the very purpose of a university.
The Erosion of the University's Core Mandate
In a thought-provoking analysis, G S Bajpai, Vice Chancellor of National Law University Delhi, points to three disturbing trends undermining Indian higher education. The first is the growing perception that academic rigour and structured schedules are primary sources of student stress. The second is the view that enforcing minimum discipline stifles student creativity. The third, directly highlighted by the court's ruling, is the notion that mandating class attendance is inherently stressful.
Bajpai, writing on January 3, 2026, invokes John Henry Newman's 19th-century classic, The Idea of a University, which envisioned universities as transformative spaces creating enlightened individuals for a just society. Today, however, universities have drifted from this core mandate of creating original knowledge for the public good.
Faculty members are increasingly burdened with roles they were never trained for, such as policing students, leading to what author Peter Fleming terms the "bureaucratisation of universities" in his book Dark Academia: How Universities Die. This administrative overload drains faculty energy and makes them targets of backlash, often from parents, when they fail in these extraneous duties.
Systemic Pressures and the Dilution of Standards
The social milieu exerts immense pressure on students, and academic environments can sometimes exacerbate mental health challenges. While universities have basic support infrastructure, they often lack specialised arrangements, making them easy scapegoats for broader systemic and social problems.
Simultaneously, regulators demand that universities follow ambitious curricula requiring continuous classes, assignments, and robust evaluation systems to maintain academic rigour. When students struggle with this pace, institutions face an unenviable choice: lower academic standards or push students to meet them. This dilemma frequently results in a toll on academic rigour itself.
Why Classroom Teaching Remains Indispensable
The Delhi High Court's verdict, while aimed at reducing stress, effectively removes the obligation to attend classes. This is a significant concern because classroom teaching is essential to academic rigour. It provides a dynamic environment for debate, immediate clarification, and intellectual engagement that pre-recorded or online content cannot fully replicate.
In an age where teaching faces a new challenge from Artificial Intelligence, the human element becomes even more critical. AI can never provide the personalised, empathetic attention that a dedicated teacher offers. For highly technical and interpretive subjects like law, the online mode is particularly insufficient. The court's attendance relaxation, however well-intentioned, risks encouraging a shift to this less effective mode of learning, potentially diluting the quality of legal education.
The ruling forces a necessary but complex conversation. It highlights the urgent need to balance student well-being with the preservation of high academic standards, and to reaffirm the classroom as the vital heart of the transformative university experience Newman championed.
