New Delhi: Starting from the academic year 2022-23, students will be able to pursue two degrees simultaneously, University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar said Tuesday.
The UGC has been planning such a move for a long time, but received a go-ahead for it in 2020, as reported by ThePrint. The guidelines were finalised and made official Tuesday.
The programme will allow students to pursue two undergraduate degrees, two postgraduate degrees, or two diploma programmes together. Kumar informed that the two degrees could be completed either in physical classroom mode, one online and one offline, or both in online mode.
For now, the two degrees will only be non-technical programmes that are approved by UGC. They can be a combination of subjects from different streams, that is humanities, science and commerce, and admission will be granted depending on the eligibility of the student and the availability of programmes. Kumar explained that combining technical and non-technical programmes will be difficult, and hence, the commission is refraining from that for now.
“A student will be able to pursue a B.Com. and a mathematics degree together if the student wishes to, and if he or she is eligible to do so. The idea is to provide as much flexibility to students as possible,” the former JNU vice-chancellor who recently became UGC chairman said.
The UGC will release the official guidelines by Wednesday and make them available to different institutions and statutory bodies as well.
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‘Not mandatory to adopt guidelines’
Jagadesh Kumar also informed that it is not mandatory for any university or a council to adopt these guidelines, but they are hoping that more and more institutions will allow students to pursue two degrees together.
He added that once the guidelines are sent to institutions and statutory bodies, they will be free to adopt it in the manner that suits them. “The process and eligibility for admission and exams will be decided by the respective institutions. If a university requires a student to sit for CUET (common university entrance test), they will have to do that, if another institution he or she is looking at does not have such a test then they will have to follow that particular institution’s admission process,” he explained.
He also added that attendance requirement for the programmes will be decided by the respective colleges and institutions.
(Edited by Shreyas Sharma)
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