Bridging Pedagogy and Practice: Evaluating the Integration of NEP–2020 in Undergraduate Architectural Education in India

Architectural education shapes how future architects respond to climate, culture and community, yet undergraduate architecture in India remains governed by the Council of Architecture's (CoA) five-year, design-centred curriculum even as the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 calls for flexible, multidisciplinary, research-based higher education. This paper reports a qualitative comparative literature and curriculum-document analysis that examines where this policy-practice mismatch appears in Indian undergraduate architectural education and proposes reform attributes for aligning the B.Arch curriculum with NEP 2020 while retaining CoA's professional requirements. Twenty-four peer-reviewed and policy studies, NEP 2020 and CoA regulations, and curriculum documents from five Indian institutions – IIT Roorkee, CEPT University Ahmedabad, NIT Calicut, SPA Delhi and Jamia Millia Islamia Delhi – were analyzed against an eight-aspect framework covering institution type, programme duration, curriculum, pedagogy, educational aim, role of theory, educator profile and knowledge sources. Design-studio instruction dominates all five curricula (39–49% of contact hours), while sustainability, research methods and interdisciplinary content remain comparatively marginal. Nine interlinked limitations were identified from the evidence: curriculum rigidity, policy/system inflexibility, weak sustainability integration, pedagogical and digital-skill gaps, limited global exposure, a weak research culture, a persistent theory-practice divide, a thin industry interface, and constrained experiential learning. For each limitation, a pool of reform attributes is proposed as candidate statements for future stakeholder validation rather than as empirically tested findings.