New guidelines of UGC have stated that it will grant undergraduate students to pursue two completely different degrees physically at the same time. According to the board, this decision is taken in order to let the students learn multiple skills at the same time. It’s up to the students if they want to pursue both the degrees from the same university of different ones.
M Jagadesh Kumar, UGC chairperson stated, “As announced in the National Education Policy-2020 and in order to allow students to acquire multiple skills, the UGC is coming up with new guidelines to allow a candidate pursue two full-time degree programmes simultaneously in physical mode. The degrees can either be pursued at the same or different universities”.
The guidelines state, “With the rapid increase in demand for higher education and limits availability of seats in regular stream, several higher education institutions have started a number of programmes in open and distance learning mode to the aspirations of students… The issue of allowing students to pursue two academic programmes simultaneously has been examined by the UGC, keeping in view the proposals envisaged in the NE which emphasises the need to facilitate multiple pathways to learning involving both formal and non-formal education modes.”
However, some of the educationalists have showed their concern by stating that instead of pursuing two different degrees, new set of skills could easily be included in the already existing ones.