UGC has announced the guidelines for students to pursue two degrees simultaneously in physical, online or combination modes in line with NEP to offer more flexibility to students and personalization in higher education.
In a virtual meeting with the media, UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar revealed UGC’s latest plan to allow students to pursue two simultaneous academic programs, including full-time degree courses.
He said that under the National Education Policy (NEP), the latest move aims to offer flexibility and personalization of higher education and even allow multidisciplinary education across various domains for students.
With this decision, students will be able to pursue two UG or PG degrees/diplomas together in the physical + physical mode or physical + online mode or online + online mode.
Kumar also notified that top universities of India have been given a choice to offer online degree courses and that new guidelines for the same will be announced in two weeks.
The official list of UGC guidelines for pursuing two simultaneous degrees or academic programs is expected to be uploaded on the UGC website tomorrow. The new move will be applied from 2022-23 onwards.
The UGC chairman said that the flexibility of allowing students to pursue two degrees at the exact times through various combinations of modes would help students educate themselves in the way they want, subject to what the HEIs decide.
Kumar said that this was when open, distance and online education modes were growing and rapidly being adopted by many universities across India.
He said that the NEP wants to facilitate multiple pathways of education, including a combination of offline and online modes that offer the freedom to students to build various skills.