Will pursuing two degree courses simultaneously help students?

The University Grant Commission or UGC has notified guidelines allowing undergraduates and postgraduates to pursue two degrees simultaneously, except for the PhD courses.

The students will now be allowed to take up specializations in two disciplines of their choice -- say, maths and history -- in either fully physical class mode, a hybrid of physical and online classes, or fully online mode.  

And the step taken by the government seems progressive. Let us say you are a high-school student who is unsure of whether to pursue the sciences or humanities in higher education. Then this policy should be of help to such students.

Till sometime back, graduates in conventional science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, were the main targets for recruitment, especially by tech and IT companies, which offer some of the most lucrative careers.

STEM, of course, has retained its importance. But, today, global IT giants have widened their recruitment focus to those with multi-disciplinary exposure.

Today, STEAM graduates, where the 'A' stands for Arts, are increasingly in demand in the world’s largest companies.
 

And, this demand will grow hand in hand with that for lateral thinking in a world where competition is cut-throat. In essence, future Indian students will see their employability rise thanks to interdisciplinary study.

This also gives students the opportunity to focus on one mainstream undergraduate degree, while enrolling in another one that has a vocational focus.

A student can only pursue two full-time academic programmes in the physical mode provided that the class timings for one programme do not overlap with those of the other.

This will also be only applicable to lecture-based courses, which include undergraduate, postgraduate, and diploma programmes. Meanwhile, PhD and MPhil programmes will not fall under the scheme.

But, what about exams and course loads? How will students manage that? Experts have told Business Standard that three broad challenges would arise.

First, how would the students manage their time tables. Secondly, universities will have to ensure that multiple simultaneous exams don’t occur. And, third, having to quickly switch focus between diverse subjects would be a challenge in itself for some students.  

However, universities, at their own end, should be able to address these issues.

Ahmedabad University Vice-Chancellor Pankaj Chandra told Business Standard that each institution would have to decide on how it would count courses for multiple degrees.

This would be critical in ensuring that students do not have to take double the time to complete two degrees, since that would defeat the purpose of the idea in the first place.

Chandra said that it was critical that the students striving to complete two degrees should not be overloaded with too many subjects at the same time, as that would seriously hamper their learning.

Meanwhile, highlighting the challenges of this move, a national daily has said that allowing students to pursue two full-time programmes in physical mode could prove to be problematic.

It argued that academically gifted students, or those with economic resources, could corner seats, which can be scarce to begin with, in two high demand courses. That is indeed a problem worth considering given India's poor college density.