Panaji: After becoming the first state in the country to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, state govt has decided not to offer admissions to the fourth year of undergraduate courses in the current academic year.
As a result, students enrolled now will complete their degree in three years instead of four.State govt plans to introduce the fourth year of undergraduate courses from the next academic year.NEP was implemented for undergraduate courses from the 2023–24 academic year, which proposed a four-year degree structure, but students admitted under this system will finish their courses in three years.Higher education director Bhushan Savaikar said that the fourth year for the undergraduate courses will start next academic year.
“One reason to postpone starting the fourth year for the undergraduate courses as per the NEP is that Goa University did not start master’s. Secondly, the syllabus of the fourth year of undergraduate and the first year of master’s should be the same and the syllabus is not finalised. This year only there will be a three-year undergraduate course,” Savaikar said.Under the previous choice-based credit course, the students were studying for 148 credits in three years of undergraduate courses.
Under NEP, the students study for 120 credits in a three-year course.One credit is 15 hours of teaching. Out of these 120 courses, for around 21 credits, the students study subjects that are not related to their discipline, like languages, courses not related to their specialisation, and value-added courses.So finally, the students who studied for only 99 credits relating to their discipline in their three-year courses as per NEP will pass out in 2025-26 with no option in Goa to study the fourth year.These 99 credits are also low as compared to 148 credits; the students of previous batches studied under the previous choice-based credit system relating to their discipline in three-year time.Even if generic elective courses in a very few disciplines were not related to the discipline, still there will be a shortfall of 24 credits as compared to the credits learnt by previous batches. It was expected that after taking admission in the fourth year, the students would have earned a total of 160 credits with at least 139 credits of subjects in their discipline.Experts said that if the introduction of the fourth year is not feasible due to financial constraints, then the existing undergraduate structure should be altered and every year eight credits of subjects should be added from first to third year of undergraduate courses.“This will ensure that students learn their discipline properly and ensure their employability. Before the introduction of NEP, students had to sit for lectures for an average of 24 hours per week, but now the learning hours are reduced to 20 hours per week,” experts said.
