Deemed varsity curbs spark panic

The universities have threatened to move court, if the draft regulations are notified in their present form, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 19, 2008, 02:47:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The University Grants Commission's new draft regulation debarring undergraduate and distance-learning courses in deemed universities has caused panic among these institutions.

These universities have threatened to move court, if the draft regulations are notified in their present form. “The entire regulation is draconian. We will move court if this draft is notified,” said Dr MS Raste, vice-chancellor of Pune's Symbiosis International Educational Centre, a deemed university. Professor Milap Dugar, vice-chancellor at the Institute of Advance Studies in Education, Rajasthan, said the regulation put the future of thousands of students in jeopardy.

Last December, the UGC had issued the UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2007 prescribing courses only at the masters’ level as the eligibility criteria to get deemed university status. The body also wants to regulate their fees to prevent the commercialisation of education, an official said.

UGC chairperson Professor SK Thorat, however, told HT there was a need for regulation to maintain standards in higher education.

“The present guidelines are not statutory and therefore cannot be binding,” Thorat said. But he did not explain why undergraduate courses will not be allowed, saying the regulations were yet to be finalised.

Admission to professional courses like engineering, medical, management, pharmacy and law would be as per the commission's regulations, the guidelines state. The existing deemed universities would have to change their Memorandum of Association to meet the new eligibility criteria, the draft regulation implies.

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies has alleged the UGC has nothing to do with regulations on distance learning. "Regulating distance learning education is the job of the Distance Education Council under IGNOU and the UGC is dragging its feet unnecessarily," the institute has told the commission. Thorat refuted the claim. He said, as the deemed universities are directly under the UGC, specific approval for distance education courses is necessary.

The deemed universities are also peeved at the commission's attempt to regulate all admissions through an All-India common entrance test, to be conducted either by the UGC or an agency approved by it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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