'Dual-use' learning

UGC's two-degree proposal is a progressive move

The University Grants Commission (UGC) proposal to allow undergraduate and postgraduate students to pursue two degrees simultaneously is a progressive step forward in the higher education universe. The broad proposal is to allow students to take up specialisations in two disciplines of their choice — for example, maths and history — in either full physical class mode, a hybrid of online and physical classes, or fully online. This is a practical suggestion for two reasons. First, this policy will help high-school students who are often unsure of whether to pursue the sciences or humanities stream in higher education. Indeed, the somewhat singular focus on science and maths in Indian society and culture, which tends to view education within the narrow paradigm of utility and employability, often straitjackets students into choices that may not suit their intellectual abilities.

Second, by promoting interdisciplinary study, the two-degree proposal addresses a growing requirement among employers for lateral thinking in a world where competition is both local and global, and in a permanent state of flux. Today, even the global IT giants, for instance, increasingly demand blue-skies thinking and have, accordingly, widened their recruiting focus from graduates in conventional science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, to those with multi-disciplinary exposure — in other words, it’s STEAM graduates, in which the A stands for Arts, that are more in demand in the world’s largest and most successful companies. The proposal to allow domain experts and not just doctoral degree holders to teach is also a sensible move, since it will address a possible faculty shortage once the demand for dual courses expands.
 

Two issues flow from this decision, however. The first is the quality of higher education courses and diploma programmes. Since the policy is likely to expand exponentially, the market for online courses and for, say, science- or arts-focused universities to start offering cross-over disciplines, the UGC will need to be circumspect in its approval-granting and monitoring processes. The predicament of the All India Council for Technical Education, which has run into problems for approving fly-by-night operators especially in high-demand management courses, offers a salutary example of the perils of an indiscriminate approval process and lax monitoring. Indeed, IT companies’ complaints of the need to retrain IT and science graduates from scratch after recruitment have been well documented.

The second problem is a longer-term one. India offers limited employment opportunities for those with graduate and post-graduate degrees, a problem that has grown more acute with the expansion in the availability of university seats and the shrinkage of the public sector without the private sector picking up the slack. This is one reason Indians tend to stay longer in the higher education system, equipping themselves with multiple qualifications to enhance their employability, an issue that dual degrees or diplomas will partly address. But without rapid economic expansion, India will wallow in the added problem of producing thousands of dual-course graduates and diploma-holders without meaningful employment opportunities, a recipe for social unrest. Of course, this is not an issue that the UGC can address but in approving this path, the government needs to understand the imperative of focusing on not such job creation but upscale employment too.