UGC to bring uniform academic year

UGC will enforce a uniform academic calendar in all higher education institutions across the country, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 4, 2007, 21:05:28 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Colleges and universities across India will have to declare results of examinations in time for a student to seek admission in the institution of his or her choice and will have to start the session not before first week of August.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) on Wednesday decided to enforce uniform academic calendar across all higher education institutions in the country by amending its guidelines - minimum standards of instruction for the grants of the First Degree through Formal Education, 2003.

The commission announced that all courses, except for professional ones, the educational institutions would be required to start the session for the first year students not later than first week of August. For students of the second year, the session will have to begin by third week of July. For all classes, the examination results will have to be declared latest by last week of June, a UGC statement said.

In case of professional courses, the commission has provided a flexibility of up to two weeks depending on requirement of the project work, summer schools and intership.

The regulation will be applicable to all universities irrespective of whether they were established through a Central Act or a State legislation. “The uniform academic calendar will apply to all institutions covered under section of the UGC Act,” a commission statement said, adding that they will come into force as soon as published in the official gazette.

The UGC decision is based on the recommendations of the expert committee headed by Professor M Anandakrishnan, former Vice-Chancellor of Anna University, Chennai. In its recommendations submitted on February 26, the committee had strongly advocated a uniform academic calendar similar to the ones in United States and Europe. It is also a first step towards achieving a uniform higher education system in the country.

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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