NEW DELHI: Three-year undergraduate courses will not be discontinued till the four-year undergraduate programme is fully implemented, University Grants Commission Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar has said.

The new credit and curriculum framework for undergraduate courses was announced earlier this week and it defines Honours degree courses as a four-year programme. However, Kumar clarified that universities can choose between the three and four year programmes. “It is left to the universities,” he said on Wednesday. The University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman also said candidates with four-year undergraduate degrees can directly pursue Ph.D and they will not require a Master’s degree.