Getting admission to top colleges is tough and with UGC allowing students to fight for not just one but multiple top colleges at the same time, it is likely that students with high scores could secure seats in two colleges and those with average scores could be pushed for a lower cut-off college.
“With students now applying to multiple programmes to get into their dream college, one can expect increased competition among courses at top colleges. It is also likely for one student to take up multiple seats. Universities will need to ramp up their infrastructure both for offline evening classes and online learning to meet the increase in demand,” said Prateek Bhargava, founder of Mindler, one of the largest career guidance platforms in India.
There is a risk that students with better qualifying credentials may crowd out an additional course, leaving fewer opportunities for others, believes Kamlesh Vyas, Partner, Deloitte India. However, his major concern was whether employers would see two degrees as an add-on or a dilution of content.
Will Employers See it as Diluted Degrees?
“We will also need to see how employers perceive students who have undertaken two courses simultaneously vs those who have undertaken them sequentially. An alternative to the UGC’s policy, which could have also achieved similar goals, could have been to widen the scope of multi-disciplinary electives and credit courses in the degree programmes as is a practice across several international universities,” said Vyas.
Not just industry but academia is also concerned about the quality of delivery while imparting two degrees. Prof (Dr) Dwarika Prasad Uniyal, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and founding Dean, School of Economics and Finance, RV University, Bengaluru, said: “Quality is very critical and hence I feel UGC needs to put riders and quality checks in place, especially in pure online degrees which will be offered by top 100 NIRF ranked universities. The end market will also determine which courses will run and which ones will lose steam as students will gravitate only towards high quality and more niche courses for their second degree.”
He also believes that the new policy will make online degrees more streamlined and force online players to offer better and more interesting programmes to complement the conventional degrees.
“Realistically speaking, students are more likely to opt for an online degree along with a physical one but it will be interesting to see how universities enable students to pursue multiple programmes in physical mode. This move will certainly lead to a lot of streamlining and bring structure to the world of online learning and digital degrees/courses,” said Bhargava.
“The key challenge the reform needs to address is the value creation for students post completing the degrees. Today, we have thousands of youth who are holding degrees but don’t have jobs. These students rely on online courses/certifications to augment their skills or learn practical skills to get employed. While multi-disciplinary learning is great for students, it will be essential to ensure that the selection is made wisely to open up more career opportunities for students,” adds the career coach.
Teaching Load, Stress in Students Could Rise
Having two-degree courses could make the entire college experience more schedule driven and constrained, leading to pressure on not only students but also teachers.
“It may create an additional teaching load, particularly if the universities were to increase intake for the courses to cater to additional expected demand, especially as there is a faculty shortage in higher education. It may also burden the students who undertake two courses and may compromise the quality of learning for a number of degrees or diplomas. It may also create coordination problems for universities on real-time courses, both at planning stage and in the running of the programmes since any change in schedule will inconvenience students who are also studying other courses,” said Vyas from Deloitte.
If a proper systematic structure is maintained by the universities to provide online education focusing upon the skilling of the students, only then the online degrees may become more streamlined, believes Prof. (Dr.) Daviender Narang, professor and Director at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Ghaziabad.
He said, “When the student is pursuing both a physical degree and an online degree, the class timing of one programme must not overlap with the other programme in order for both the degrees to be streamlined. This might increase stress levels among the students but will definitely aid the students to gather the right skill set for the industry. If both the physical and the online system will work in a predefined structured manner, it will not dilute the education quality.”
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