FYI@Librarian: UGC @ To-Do list for Institutes by the end of this month

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

UGC @ To-Do list for Institutes by the end of this month

UGC @ To-Do list for Institutes by the end of this month

The government is set to specify a list of nonnegotiable ‘todos’ for every higher education institute.

The higher education regulator, University Grants Commission (UGC), will later this month list out these instructions, including key quality parameters, that all institutions must strive to improve academic performance, top sources at the human resource development (HRD) ministry said.

The UGC mandate — as it will be known — is likely to be announced on May 24 and will be immediately applicable to all higher education institutes under the purview of the commission. Sources told ET that the UGC list would aim at setting clear and simple standards on curriculum revision, orientation for students, teacher training, accreditation of courses and market linkages among other aspects.

UGC rules currently apply to almost all institutes of higher education — as many as 850 establishments, including central, state, private and deemed-to-be universities and colleges, come under its purview through various mechanisms. All these institutes will have to compulsorily follow the UGC mandate. The instructions will be similar to those issued by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) last year for technical institutes, the sources said.

The UGC mandate and the AICTE mandate are among key preparatory steps being taken by the government to shift to a new regulatory regime for higher education, which is less restrictive and strongly focussed on establishing clear quality benchmarks.

The AICTE mandate was announced in May 2017 “to improve the standards of technical education and to provide competent technical manpower for the Make-in-India campaign”, the HRD ministry had told Parliament.

The AICTE’s seven-point mandate asked every technical education institute to introduce a mandatory induction training for every student on admission to prime her up on fundamental concepts and the language skills required for a career in the field. It also called for three mandatory internships of 4-8 weeks for every student before graduation, reworking of the endof-the-year exam to tests on concepts, besides mandatory accreditation of every academic course to ensure it is in tune with industry benchmarks and subject-wise revisions of curriculum every year.

The ministry’s nudge to the UGC to issue the list of essential ‘to-dos’ comes amid a range of reform-centric moves initiated by the government over the past few months. It recently brought in fresh regulations on graded autonomy, promising increased autonomy to institutes that are assessed to have achieved excellence on various parameters.

That apart, considerable spadework is on within the government to replace multiple regulatory authorities in higher education with a single regulator, termed the Higher Education Evaluation Authority (HEERA).

The overall thrust of the government is to bring in a new regulatory regime that is less restrictive and allows institutes greater latitude, especially on academic matters.