Govt to give equivalence to UK degree

The Centre is exploring ways to give equivalence to UK’s Master’s degree in India to allow British higher education institutions collaborate with their Indian counterparts to offer postgraduate programs in the country.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry’s move also aims at benefitting thousands of Indian students who have PG degrees from UK or are pursuing a PG programme in the country.
“A task force has been set-up to examine the issue and suggest necessary measures and it is likely to hold its first meet this month,” sources in the HRD Ministry said.

A UK postgraduate degree, for which thousands of Indian students aspire for every year, is not recognised in India. In UK, the duration of any Masters’ programme is one-year while it is two years in India.

“There are many institutions in UK which want to collaborate with institutions in India and offer their programmes. But, non-equivalence to their Masters’ degrees in India is a problem in such collaborations,” sources said. 

This is not favourable to Indian students who are pursuing such programmes in UK as their degrees are of no use in India. On the basis of such degrees, they can neither pursue further studies like PhD nor apply for a job in India. The university grants commission (UGC) recently approved regulations to ensure academic collaboration between Indian and foreign institutes.

The regulation mandated that only those institutes which have been graded ‘A’ by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) or the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) can collaborate with foreign institutes. It also mandated that foreign institutes collaborating with Indian institutions must figure in the list of top 500 global educational institutes, as ranked by the Times Higher Education Rankings or the Shanghai Rankings.

“Once UK’s masters degrees get equivalence in India, it will open ways for collaboration. This will finally benefit the Indian students who aspire to undertake such programmes,” sources said.