National Education Policy 2020 (NEP2020) has a very nice feature of student mobility. It desires that students be able to move around from one university to the other and take courses from different places and one university will consider credits from other university and if all academic requirements are met satisfactorily, it will grant degree to the student. At JK Lakshmipat University (JKLU, Jaipur), we have been supporting student mobility from a long time. We have encouraged our students to spend a semester or more at other fine institutions and we will consider the credits earned at those places towards the graduation requirements. In fact, we have gone a step further and look for such opportunities for our students, both in India and abroad, signed agreements where ever necessary. We, unlike most other private universities, would not double charge the students, and they pay tuition only at their host institution. And our students go in large numbers to IITs, IIITs, and universities abroad.
We have also been welcoming students from other colleges to spend a semester at JKLU, but frankly that hasn't been very successful. Not many universities in India allow their students to spend a semester elsewhere, and hence receiving exchange students is difficult.
The other thing that we have been doing even before NEP2020 is Lateral Admissions, that is, someone who has spent a year at some other college can seek admission at JKLU in the second year and we will grant appropriate credits for the work done at the other college, and the student can graduate in 3 additional years (for a 4-year program) and 2 additional years (for a 3-year program). This isn't popular either because most people are happy with what they have, and there is too much uncertainty about the process. And hence, this blog to explain the process of lateral admission to help students who may be interested in such a transfer.
I will take the example of B.Tech. program for explaining the process, though a similar process is available in other programs as well. A student takes admission in one college, and after several months, decides to apply to JKLU for the second year. We will expect the student to submit details of all the courses done at the other institution, including the curriculum, and also the transcript or marksheet from the university. Our faculty will review this. Some courses will be similar to the courses in our curriculum (whether we do that in our first year or second year, it does not matter). Depending on performance in that course, we may consider that course as having completed. Note that we are not looking for identical courses (because the chances are that the curriculum in two institutions will never really match 100%) but only sufficient overlap. For example, almost every college would have a programming course in the first year, and a couple of maths courses. We can consider them as equivalent to our courses. Some courses may not be in our curriculum but we may consider them as equivalent to our "Open Electives." So, after this evaluation, we will decide what courses the student still needs to do once s/he joins our program. (Even if you do not have the official transcripts, we can still plan your program, though admission will require the transcripts at a later stage.)
For example, let us assume that our program has 40 courses spread over 4 years. The student comes after having done 10 courses in the first year. It is possible that we consider only 8 of them as equivalent to our program (including open electives). So now, we will say that 32 courses are still needed to be done for graduating with our degree. Now some faculty member will prepare a plan to complete these 32 courses over the remaining 3 years keeping in mind the pre-requisites, or any other constraints of the university. Now, you follow this plan (or make changes to suit your needs), and if you keep doing well, three years later, you will get a degree from JKLU.
So the lateral admission in JKLU is a pretty simple affair. If anyone is interested in switching from their college to JKLU, our admissions team would be happy to work with you on the same.
I do hope that many more institutions provide this kind of flexibility to their students and students of other institutions in line with NEP2020.
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