New rules for local degrees and foreign university tie-ups

India’s higher education regulatory body the University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced new sets of rules for students, allowing them to pursue two degrees in Indian universities simultaneously, and has also simplified partnership procedures for joint degrees with foreign universities.

Undergraduate and masters students in India will be permitted to pursue two degrees at the same time from this year, which UGC Chairman Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar said was part of the country’s push to allow more freedom and flexibility for students as well as increasing multidisciplinary options.

Kumar told the media on 12 April: “This would allow students to acquire multiple skills as announced in the new National Education Policy (NEP) and more students will have access to top higher education institutions.”

The NEP is the blueprint for reforming the Indian higher education sector over the next 10 years. It was released in 2020.

The UGC chairman said just 3%-4% of applicants are usually admitted to higher education. The objective was to “empower” some of the best higher education institutions in the country to begin online courses as these can provide “unlimited” seats, he said.

According to the UGC, starting from the 2022-23 academic year, students can have the option, if the universities provide it, to pursue two bachelor degrees or two masters degrees at the same time at the same institution or at two different institutions. They can do both courses physically, or one course online and the other in offline mode, or both online, as India now allows universities to provide fully online degrees.

Easing of rules on foreign partnerships

In a separate announcement this week, the UGC also simplified the procedure for Indian higher education institutions to offer joint degrees with overseas universities that feature in the top 1,000 in international (QS or Times Higher Education) rankings, without requiring prior UGC approval, as was the case in the past.

Kumar said on Tuesday 19 April that under the new regulations soon to be made public, universities and colleges will no longer be required to seek UGC permission to forge joint degree arrangements if the foreign partner met the ranking criteria.

The UGC decided at a meeting on 31 March that an Indian institution with a National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) grading of 3.1 (out of 4), or among the top 100 universities under the country’s National Institutional Ranking Framework, will be able to tie up with a foreign institution under new rules being finalised after a first draft was released by the UGC in February last year.

The UGC will allow institutions to issue a joint degree or dual degree from the Indian and overseas institution. Previously, only an Indian-accredited degree could be awarded with an additional certificate from the foreign institution. This will only be allowed for degrees delivered conventionally, not for online or distance degrees.

“The earlier regulations were too strict and there were too many bottlenecks. Our simplified regulations will increase the scale at which students could benefit from such collaborations between Indian and foreign higher education institutions,” Kumar said, referring in particular to the expansion of eligible foreign institutions from the top 500 under its previous “twinning” policy with qualified foreign institutions.

The move would aid the internationalisation of Indian institutions, promote interdisciplinary education and offer a cross-cultural experience to students and may also bring in foreign exchange, Kumar said.

“Prior to this change, other than the 20 Institutes of Eminence, such partnerships required sign-off from India’s University Grants Commission. This is no longer required by the Indian universities in this much expanded group of over 200 universities who can now look at this lighter touch pathway,” said Adrian Mutton, CEO of Sannam S4 Group, an international business consultancy that facilitates tie-ups between companies and universities seeking them in India and elsewhere.

Institutes of Eminence refer to a list of 20 top universities in India, both public and private, which have greater autonomy, with public institutions attracting extra government funding as part of the government’s plan to push them up world university rankings.

“This is a very progressive step from the Government of India as part of its commitment to the country’s fundamental reform of its education sector via the National Education Policy reform 2020,” Mutton told University World News.

“It demonstrates India’s willingness to encourage real partnerships between Indian and international universities and recognises the contributions each make to deliver a world-class student experience.”

Types of collaborative arrangement

Previous UGC regulations on twinning arrangements between Indian universities and foreign partners meant students could only earn less than 30% of the overall course credits required from a foreign university.

But with the joint degree arrangement now allowed, an Indian student can do more than 30% of the course credits at a foreign partner institution and both the foreign and Indian institution can issue a degree – one each, Kumar said.

For dual degrees, students will have to complete 30% of course credits at a foreign institution, but the degree awarded by both Indian and foreign institutions will indicate the credits earned at the respective institutions.

Under a third type of partnership degree, a “twinning arrangement shall be a collaborative arrangement whereby students enrolled with an Indian higher education institution may undertake their programme of study partly in India and partly in the foreign higher education institution,” the regulations state.

The degree or diploma offered under the twinning arrangement shall be awarded by the Indian higher education institution only. This arrangement is similar to what some private Indian universities currently offer, allowing students to complete some part of their studies at a partner foreign institution.

“At Sannam S4 Acumen we have already laid much of the groundwork for this announcement,” Mutton said. “Through the launch of our groundbreaking TNE (Transnational Education) Matchmaker and Global Gateway Program we have matched almost two dozen international and Indian universities for this type of collaboration at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels,” Mutton said. Acumen is the education division of Sannam S4.

“Indian students want options not just for the traditional courses such as business and engineering which, whilst remaining popular, are not the growth areas. Design, liberal arts, diversified healthcare and agricultural courses, specialist business areas such as data, analytics, AI, logistics, fashion, marketing and fintech, plus a big focus on sustainability or SDG [Sustainable Development Goal] areas, are attracting great interest.”

Concerns about quality

Responding to the announcement that two online degrees could be pursued simultaneously at Indian institutions, academics acknowledged it was a major change, but some expressed concern that for courses delivered physically, quality of education could be compromised.

Many academics said any full-time degree programme requires full-time focus and effort. They said the entire focus of the student has to be on the degree and allowing them to acquire an extra degree would lower the quality of education.

Dev Kumar Sinha, a Delhi University executive council member, said: “Students will have to study online while undertaking dual degrees because it will not be possible to attend both courses physically simultaneously.”

“If [the student] does the course online, then what will be its market value? This must be considered. Will the student be able to acquire necessary skills and knowledge when his focus is on two places? Somewhere there is bound to be a decline in the [achievement] level.”

Sinha said it will also lead to competition that is not in the interests of some students.

“This will create competition in a way, as many students will race to acquire two degrees. Talented students will enrol in two courses; the average student will not get any chance in such a situation, especially when the numbers of seats in some courses are limited.”

However, he did not think it would increase work pressure on professors as some teachers fear. “I will take the classes as I am taking [them] now, but the students will be under pressure, they will have to attend double the number of classes they are currently attending,” he told University World News.

Higher workload

Rajesh Jha, assistant professor at Rajdhani College, Delhi University, feared it could lead to academic job cuts. “The nod for two simultaneous degrees is based on fallacious assumptions that teachers are not required as there is no difference between ‘class-with teacher’ and ‘class-without teacher’”, he said, referring to dual degrees being awarded for both conventional and online degrees.

Sangeeta Mukherjee, a professor at Dr Harisingh Gour University in Sagar in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, was in favour of students pursuing two degrees simultaneously. “It will provide a more holistic and flexible approach to students, allowing them access to multidisciplinary education,” she said.

Some academics said the two degrees would be an extra burden on students who would have to cope with a full course in one subject and another full course in a second. Instead, the curriculum could be scaled back or reduced for one or both subjects.

Students also said the two-degree option would lead to an increase in their workload.

Vishal Malhotra, a student of Bundelkhand University in the city of Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, said the focus of the curriculum should be to give students an in-depth knowledge of subjects and prepare them for employment as well as for higher education in other countries.

“But pursuing two degrees simultaneously is not feasible and will inevitably lead to a surface-level approach towards learning,” he told University World News.

Another student, Rishabh Patel at Delhi University, said: “There have been concerns that many students are not job-ready and so the focus should be on giving them more time to build on their employability skills.”

“The two-degree programme will not serve that purpose,” he told University World News.

According to some academics, the kind of flexibility the UGC wants for students is already available in options like the Four-Year Undergraduate Program (FYUP), which allows students an opportunity to experience a fuller range of courses, including multidisciplinary education, in addition to focusing on their selected major and minor subjects.

Most undergraduate degrees in India are three years in duration but some major universities such as Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University are adopting the FYUP from this year, after the UGC released a draft curriculum framework for the four-year programme last month.

There is also concern about additional exams for school leavers. According to the UGC, students must fulfil admission policies of each of the universities and courses. For instance, if admission to one course is on the basis of scores of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) mainly for engineering degrees, and another on the basis of the Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET), then students will have to clear both entrance exams.

Institutions will select their own admission process, which students said would limit some students.