DU Executive Council to decide on allowing dual degrees

NEW DELHI: Delhi University’s Executive Council will discuss allowing students to pursue two academic programmes simultaneously in its meeting this week. Allowing simultaneous degrees was recommended in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the University Grants Commission had framed guidelines for it in May

In October, the UGC asked all universities to make provisions for students pursuing two academic degrees simultaneously in physical mode. The DU Executive Council will discuss the topic in its meeting scheduled for December 8.

According to the Executive Council agenda, the council will discuss the UGC guidelines on allowing students to pursue two simultaneous academic programmes.

UGC guidelines on simultaneous degrees

The UGC guidelines say that a student can pursue two full time academic programmes in physical mode provided that the class timings of one programme do not overlap with the other.

The policy also says that a student can pursue two full time academic programmes, one in physical mode and other in open distance learning (ODL) mode. However, students can only pursue ODL degrees or courses from those universities that are approved by the UGC.

These guidelines, however, are not applicable for PhD programmes.

In the guidelines, UGC said that these changes will encourage “imaginative and flexible curricular structures to enable creative combinations of disciplines of study” and will do away with “rigid boundaries” around academic programmes.

Delhi University syllabus

The DU Executive Council will also table the second semester syllabus for more than 40 undergraduate programmes – BA, BCom, BSc and others – based on the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework 2022 in the faculty of arts, faculty of science, faculty of mathematical sciences, faculty of commerce and business studies, faculty of music and fine arts, faculty of applied social sciences and faculty of education.

DU teachers associations had earlier criticised the university for not releasing the complete syllabus for undergraduate programmes in advance. Teachers had said that it would be unfair for students to get into a programme without seeing the full syllabus.

The council will also discuss bringing “uniformity in teacher-student ratios” . According to the recommendations, there will be a fixed number of 60 students per classroom for all undergraduate programmes and 50 students per classroom for postgraduate programmes.