UGC wants quality control cells in colleges

The UGC aims to provide an internal mechanism to improve the quality of education in institutes of higher learning, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 24, 2008, 23:43:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The University Grants Commission will soon ask all universities and colleges in India to have an internal quality assurance cell to improve the quality of higher education being imparted.

A decision to make setting up of these cells under the UGC Act, 1956 was taken at the commission’s meeting last week, UGC sources said. This is being seen as the first step for introduction of mandatory accreditation for universities by 2010 and for colleges by 2012 as envisaged under the 11th plan.

By making the creation of these cells mandatory, the UGC aims to provide an internal mechanism to improve the quality of education in institutes of higher learning “It is significant that such an internalisation of quality would be invaluable in the enhancement of the quality within the institution,” a UGC official said.

Under the voluntary mechanism for setting up the cells in accredited institutes, the cells have been set up only in 100 universities and 2,000 accredited colleges. Till now, only 140 of total 390 universities and 3,972 colleges of 19,000 colleges have got accreditation done from National assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), a government body based in Bangalore.

Now, the UGC want to reverse this trend by giving financial incentive of Rs five lakh to universities and Rs two lakh to colleges to set up this cell. In the new draft scheme floated by the commission, the cell will be required to have a full-time director to look into quality aspects of education. The cell would be helped by an advisory body to be headed by the chairman of the institution.

The cell would be required to develop and apply quality parameters for various academic and administrative activities, would be nodal office for maintaining institutional data and would arrange for feedback from students on quality issues. It would also prepared annual quality assurance report to be submitted to UGC and NAAC, which would also be available for public viewing.

The UGC is also working on new regulations to make accreditation mandatory for all higher education institutions under the UGC Act. Dr S S Rathi, a member of Delhi University court, however, said that practical approach is that NAAC should target the private universities and other private institutions where commercial returns are the sole guiding factors.

UGC, however, believes that mandatory accreditation will help the parents and the students to make informed choice of the courses and institutions, as NAAC would grade the institutions on different parameters. It will also help the institutions to augment its quality through proper introspection of its present status, a UGC official said.

UGC says NAAC has geared up for the challenge by creating a pool of about 300 assessors to undertake the mammoth job.

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

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk LIVE and more across India.