New Delhi: Students pursuing a four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) will be able to complete their post-graduation (PG) courses in just one year as hundreds of universities across the country are set to commence the one-year PG programme from 2024.
According to the University Grants Commission (UGC), a one-year PG programme can be implemented in 2024. However, it will be only implemented for students who will complete the FYUP.
Opting for the one-year PG programme would not be mandatory, and students would also be able to enrol in two-year PG courses as before.
According to UGC, students who have completed or are pursuing a three-year UG course will not be able to apply for the one-year post-graduation programme. They will have to enrol for the two-year PG programmes like before.
Under the FYUP, students will be awarded a degree of honours in the discipline of research.
At present FYUP is implemented in about 150 universities across the country. According to UGC, more than 300 universities are going to offer the FYUP in the next session.
According to UGC, there is a special focus on research in the two-year PG course. The UGC said that now the restrictions on subjects in PG courses have been removed. This change in PG courses has been made on the basis of the National Education Policy 2020.
The UGC has recently released a new draft and credit framework for PG programmes. It said that for the first time, a one-year master's degree programme will be implemented in 2024, which will be possible after four years of graduation.
According to UGC, initially, 105 universities across the country had implemented the FYUP. The universities implementing FYUP included 19 central universities, 24 state-level universities, 44 deemed universities and 18 private universities. These include Delhi University, Aligarh Muslim University, Jammu Central University, Visva Bharati University, Rashtriya Sanskrit University and Maulana Azad National Urdu University. The number of these universities has increased from 105 to 150 now.
Under the framework of FYUP, the UGC has provided students the option to pursue a three-year undergraduate degree as well as a four-year honours degree.