Centre Drafts Bill for Single Edu Regulator
Hectic meetings on the draft begin; panels formed for academic standards
Within days
of indicating that it may move Parliament to create a single higher education
regulator before the 2019 general elections, the Modi government has drawn up a
draft legislation to pilot the move.
Accessed by ET, the draft legislation for setting
up a ‘Higher Education Evaluation and Regulation Authority, 2018’ (HEERA) or
Higher Education Regulatory Council (HERC), says that once the new regulator is
created, existing regulatory authorities such as the University Grants
Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the
National Council for Technical Education (NCTE) will be scrapped.
Signifying a
shift in the higher education regulatory regime, this draft Bill calls for a
new regulator that will mentor institutes, besides defining academic standards.
While it won’t have grant giving powers, HEERA will be armed with zero
tolerance mechanisms for violations, including provisions to terminate the
affiliation of an institute.
The draft
Bill is being discussed by the government and is being scrutinised by the Prime
Minister’s Office; it will be a key discussion agenda for a policy retreat that
the HRD ministry is planning during month-end in Mussourie for drawing up a New
Education Strategy for 2022.
The HRD
ministry had announced a 40-point action plan in April where it said that it
was planning to bring the HEERA Bill in Parliament by September 2018.
The HEERA
Bill says that the new authority will focus on setting quality standards for
institutions, specify learning outcomes, lay down standards of teaching
assessment and research and evaluate the yearly academic performance of the
institutes on clearly laid criteria.
ET has learnt
that a number of committees have been set up in the UGC to develop the academic
standards and learning outcomes for each course. These will become part of the
HEERA regime, sources said.
The HEERA,
unlike UGC, will “provide for training/mentoring of institutions found to be
failing in maintaining required academic standards”. Central or state
government grants to an institute will require that they meet the standards
outlined by HEERA. Funding will be largely vested with HRD ministry which will
release grants based on annual action plans presented by institutes rather than
just dole out money.
But there’s
still debate over how to bring state universities within the ambit of HEERA,
and whether regulation of teacher education institutes should be within its
purview.
Unlike the
UGC Act, the new single education regulator will be backed by more teeth. It
will be able to bar an institute from admitting new students in a particular
course if it is established that it has violated the quality benchmarks. It
will also be able to terminate affiliation of such an institute and provide for
measures to safeguard interest of the enrolled students.
HEERA may
provide expert advice ’to any institution or its departments for ‘promoting
excellence’. If any university is found to grant affiliation to a course in
contravention of regulations of the HEERA, it may be faced with a penalty,
fine, withdrawal of degree granting powers and in dire cases, even a direction
to cease all operations. A three-year imprisonment has been proposed for those
that fail to comply with the penalty imposed.
HEERA, like
UGC, will specify and notify degrees and their nomenclature, have the right to
bring a variety of regulations for maintenance of standards at varsities.
Source | Economic Times | 4th May
2018
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Mr. Pralhad
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Master of
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Senior
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