Reshma Ravishanker

A delay in admission procedures, colleges demanding original marks cards and certificates besides migration certificates are among concerns for students pursuing two academic programmes simultaneously, Karnataka’s college authorities say.

Even while the University Grants Commission (UGC) acknowledged the same in its letter on Tuesday asking colleges to facilitate mechanisms that allows students to pursue two programmes at ease, varsities claim they are awaiting state’s guidelines on implementation.

The first set of guidelines on the same, in line with NEP 2020 was issued by UGC in April 2022 after which colleges were asked to facilitate mechanisms through statutory bodies to facilitate the same. Besides, colleges have said that there are few enquiries for the dual degree programmes.

The principal of a private degree college in Bengaluru said that the challenges regarding admission into dual degrees is multifaceted. “Admissions procedures at colleges themselves are taking longer than usual. This means students have deposited their school leaving certificates for verification at colleges or universities for a month or more. For them to produce the same, when another college insists on seeing ‘originals only’ is a challenge.

“The UUCMS glitches that cause delays must be addressed. Else, this difficulty at the time of admissions is bound to exist,” said the principal.

Meanwhile, BG Bhaskara, principal, Sheshadripuram College said that varsities could work as alternatives to help students. “They will either opt for one online and the other offline. Else, they will choose morning and evening colleges offering the two courses they wish to pursue. If one varsity demands to hold original documents, they must give the other an acknowledgement of validation of certificates. This will be a temporary issue which the college must resolve until the academic bank of credit is created. That will allow direct verification. So far, we have not received any queries from students about this,” he said.

Balakrishna M, principal, Maharani’s Science College for Women, Mysuru said, “There is no discussion on how this needs to be implemented, we are awaiting the state’s guidelines on how pursuing two degrees at once would be possible. NEP is at a nascent stage now. We have not been approached by students asking for the nitty gritty,” he said.