National Agriculture Education Policy Soon

The government of India is going to bring the country’s first National Agriculture Education Policy.

The government is set to being the first National Agriculture Education Policy.
The policy will bring academic credit banks and degree programmes with multiple exits and entry options.
The Agricultural education policy applies to 74 universities which are focused on crop science, veterinary, fisheries and dairy training and research.
The Agriculture Ministry will soon receive a draft text of the policy being prepared by a six member committee of Vice-Chancellors.
Every year in the country, more than 45,000 students are admitted to agriculture universities.
The agricultural education is already aligned with the new education policy which wants a shift to four-year undergraduate degrees and experimental education.
The major challenge for the universities will be the push towardsmulti-disciplinary sciences.
Currently, Agri Universities are domain-specific in horticulture, veterinary science and fisheries sciences, etc.
The new education policy wants to incorporate humanities and social sciences along with agri sciences, which will be a big challenge for Universities.

The Academic Credit Banks allow the movement of students within and outside the University system.
This is done by incorporating distributed learning systems.
A credit-based formal system will be established that integrates skills and experience in the credit recognition system.
The academic earned from Higher Education Institutions will be digitally stored and can be used for awarding a certificate, degree or diploma.

The agricultural education policy has a six month internship programme called READY which is Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana.
In this programme, all the students have to undergo a six month internship programme.
This program is in their fourth year to gain hands-on training, industrial experience, research expertise, entrepreneurship skills and rural awareness.
The main obstacle of the program is how to ensure that experiential learning is made available for all the students if there is multiple entry-exit systems.