As things crawl back to normalcy after the COVID-19 pandemic, a fresh batch of students is set to start their undergraduate education after combating the upheaval brought upon by the pandemic. This batch steps into college amidst a host of fresh regulations instituted this year by the UGC, all in a bid to implement the vision of the National Education Policy 2020.
Professor Jagadesh Kumar, Chairman, UGC, speaks to EdexLive about how some of these new measures will impact these students as they begin their higher education careers. Excerpts from the interview:
1. The launch of the National Digital University is due soon. Can you throw light on how this university will function and if it really will expand the reach of education in the country?
One of the primary objectives of the National Education Policy is to provide high-quality education with better access at an affordable cost. However, the university system in our country does not always support that. We have about 1,050 universities. Some of them are highly rated and some of them are located in rural set-ups with limited faculty and infrastructure. There is a clamour to join a few top universities where the admission procedure is through elimination rather than selection. A large number of talented students who are aspirational in getting access to high-quality education are not getting that opportunity.
And with this background in mind and also since the NEP emphasises the introduction of digital technology in education, we have decided that we will establish an Indian Digital University.
Hashing out the details
We are still working out if this university will be established as a deemed university or through an Act of Parliament. It will function as a hub-and-spoke model, with a technical and administrative team, including the Vice-Chancellor acting as the hub and other top-quality universities, including the IITs and the central universities acting as spokes. In due course, we will also be inviting top international universities and other organisations. All those disciplines that do not require practical experiments or lab experience will be offered as programmes at the Digital University.
Digital content, mentorship and evaluation
We also need to work out how the digital content is going to be prepared, on which platform it will be placed and what kind of interactive sessions we can include. The university will also require a large number of mentors to provide guidance to the students in a live session. These could be retired professors, working faculty members or industry experts. We need to look at the process of evaluation for these students. Because ultimately the value of the degrees will depend on the trust people will have in the assessment and evaluation processes. One possibility is that students take online exams at designated centres.
Connecting the dots
In order to ensure placements for these students, we will have employers on the platform as well. The Digital University will connect the dots right from admission to selection of the programmes, to assessment and evaluation to mentoring through experts to finally job placement of these students.
2. Will the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system solve the issue of the delays that scholars are complaining about in receiving their scholarships?
Scholarships are a lifeline to students who qualify for UGC Junior Research Fellowship and it is important that they are disbursed on time. There should be almost no paperwork in this process, which is the reason why there have been such delays in the disbursal over the years. With the DBT, we have introduced several modifications to the existing Canara Bank Portal. We did this after a feedback session with about 40 research scholars from across the country.
Inside DBT
In the first two weeks of a month, the student will initiate a scholarship request on the portal to the supervisor. If approved, it will go to the Dean of the department, from where it will be transferred to the nodal officer, who will verify the documents uploaded on the portal. This nodal officer will accumulate the demand from all the students, and before the 15th of every month, the respective university will send their total demand for scholarships to the UGC. This amount is then consolidated by the UGC and will transfer this demand to the Ministry of Education. The MoE will then release funds by the 25th of the month and this money is transferred to Canara Bank. By the first week of the following month, Canara Bank will transfer the amount directly to the students’ bank accounts.
The whole process is streamlined and students can log into the portal and track their requests. They can also send a direct email to whatever level their request might be stuck at. After the implementation, we took feedback from 40 research scholars again. I was a part of that meeting and it was a pleasant surprise to know that there were absolutely no complaints. Scholarships are being disbursed without any delay across the country.
3. The CUET was a mammoth undertaking this year and admissions have been conducted into colleges and universities through CUET. What feedback has the UGC received from educational institutions on how CUET impacts the admissions process?
One positive feedback that we got from the students is that the questions were not as tough as they were expecting. And the other feedback, of course, was that in some centres, there were glitches. It was not a thing that should have happened. The NTA and the UGC have taken note of it and we are working on this issue.
The other feedback that we have is that the admission process has been democratised; it is no longer concentrated on the top rankers in the Board exams. Students are now getting admission into top universities such as Delhi University, when earlier, with the admission based solely on Board exam scores, they could have never realised their dream. I think the introduction of CUET has brought in a kind of level praying ground across the country. There is a lot of diversity among the students who are joining these universities now, it is not limited to only urban areas where people study in certain Boards and get very high marks but, geographically, there is a wide distribution of the students. These are national-level universities and we want students coming from different parts of the country to interact with each other, study for a few years together and contribute to the growth of our country.
4. Is it possible to get any data on this claim of diversity in admissions due to CUET? Also, what areas for improvement have the UGC and the NTA noted from this year in the conduct of the CUET?
Certainly, I think we need to prepare data on the geographical distribution of the students and how it is positively impacting student admission. Currently, university admissions are going on. Let things settle down. The UGC will definitely collect the information both from the NTA and the individual universities and we will come up with this data sometime in the near future.
Exam schedule in a few weeks
Looking ahead, we will work out a timetable for all the examinations that are of importance in the university system. So the NTA has formed a committee involving experts from the IITs who have extensive experience in conducting JEE and GATE. They are working on a time plan for all the exams, including NEET, JEE and CUET. Hopefully, in another few weeks, we will announce this schedule so that these students will have an idea when these exams are going to be held.
NTA Committee looking into CUET glitches
In the current CUET, in some centres, there were definitely some glitches and we need to plug those kinds of problems. Therefore, we have formed another committee to study how the CUET and other exams are conducted by the NTA and the central infrastructure. This committee will provide feedback on removing these glitches during the examinations so that students can focus on writing their examinations now without them being cancelled or postponed.
5. UGC has also proposed a merger of the NEET UG, JEE and CUET exams. What impact will such a merger have and is the NTA equipped to conduct the exam?
Even before I talk about the viability of any such national entrance examination, I would like to assure all the students that sufficient time will be given once we take the decision to conduct this one examination for admissions in different disciplines. Even after we announce we will give at least two years’ time so that the students who are in Class X are prepared for it.
Students will be informed well in advance
We have floated this idea and there are discussions and debates among stakeholders and universities. We will definitely look into all aspects of conducting such a national examination. It will be a reality sometime in the future, but right now, it’s just an idea to mentally prepare those students who are still in school. But there’s nothing to worry about. This examination will not come as a surprise and you will have ample time to prepare once this is announced.
6. The Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) has been made compulsory for HEIs from this academic year. Apart from credit mobility and flexibility in completing their education for the students, what else does ABC bring to the table?
Under the National Credit Framework, the Academic Bank of Credit will store the credits of students right from the school level. And as per the framework, the first year of the UG programme is Level 4.5 and the PhD programme is at Level 8. We have also defined how many credits are required at every entry level. For example, to move from level 4.5 to level 5, the student will have to acquire a minimum of 40 credits. The storage of these credits across the academic career has several advantages. It allows students to take a break, even at the end of the first year of their UG programme (Level 4.5), get work experience if they wish and then come back into the education system at Level 5, with their credits secure.
Advantage ABC
Apart from Multi-Entry and Multi-Exit, the ABC also allows students to move from one discipline to another. For instance, a student of BA Economics I year can opt to study Mathematics for a year and then return and continue with the UG programme. ABC will provide flexibility and seamless movement from discipline to discipline or from institution to institution.
We have recently made it compulsory for all online and ODL universities. These students are geographically distributed and not attached to any physical university. Therefore, credits of such students have to be stored mandatorily in ABC. Currently, we have close to 600 universities and 30 lakh students already registered in ABC. Crucially, from this academic session, we have mandated that first-year students are registered on the ABC portal.
7. One of the biggest policy changes that created news this year was the Four-Year Undergraduate Plan. What are some of the loopholes in the CBCS system that the FYUP fixes?
The FYUP regulations are almost ready. We will be announcing it soon. Several universities such as DU, even deemed-to-be universities, have already admitted students in the FYUP. Once the regulations are out, the FYUP will be applicable to students who are already enrolled in three-year programmes. It will save time for the students. They don’t have to do a three-year undergrad program and a two-year Master’s degree in order to get employment or go for higher studies. If they get a minimum of 75% in their FYUP, they are eligible to directly join PhD programmes.
Meeting international standards
Apart from that, international UG programmes are by and large four-year programmes, so this will make UG programmes in India compatible with global educational standards. We are also making internships a mandatory component of the FYUP. Students will also have flexibility in selecting their major and minor areas of study, thus promoting interdisciplinary education.
8. You have also teased a possible “hybrid system” for teacher training for higher educational institutions. How does this work? And what other plans does the UGC have in place for teacher training with the introduction of these new policies?
The teachers have to be trained to change their own attitude towards teaching-learning processes. Students should develop the ability to question authority, be it the teacher or the textbook or even a formula. Also, teachers need to be trained in terms of the assessment of the students. Why should these students be assessed only through an end-term examination? Why not have continuous evaluation through multiple components such as projects and presentations?
Tech for teachers
Teachers also need to be made tech-savvy. For every course I teach at IIT (Delhi), I create a Facebook page and I am available to students 24/7. They send comments and I reply. This is how you can connect with your students. Teachers should also become experts at creating their own digital content. They need to be trained to make the students the centre of teaching-learning processes.
So we have close to about 15 lakh teachers across the country and we are working on a plan to identify 100 centres across the country and on preparing the curriculum for this training. The duration is flexible and we have opted for a hybrid system because it’s impossible to bring all these teachers in physical mode. Just like students, teachers have to remain lifelong learners.
9. Collaboration with foreign universities also seems to be a talking point this year, with dual, joint and twinning degrees with foreign universities. What are some regulations that the UGC is seeking to put in place to ensure that this benefit is extending to all sections of society?
As I said, the NEP prioritises affordable education. When we want to internationalise our education by allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in our country or when universities sign MoUs with foreign universities for twinning, joint and dual degree programmes we are trying to emphasise to the stakeholders that education has to be affordable. The two major expenditures of doing a UG programme in a foreign university are tuition fees and living costs. However, with these campuses of foreign universities in India, a large portion of this cost will be mitigated. We are also sensitising these universities to follow a reasonable fee structure for the students.
For middle-class parents, who find it difficult to send their kids abroad for higher education, twinning, joint and dual degree programmes are a good option. Students can do a semester or two abroad as part of these programmes and access and experience quality international education. This, I believe will touch a large cross-section of students who would otherwise not have had this opportunity.
10. The new draft guidelines issued for awarding autonomy to colleges eliminate the need for on-site visits by UGC committees to grant autonomy to colleges. How will the UGC still ensure that quality is maintained?
The UGC is a facilitator, although people perceive it as a regulator. Our regulations are designed to introduce an element of freedom to the institutions, along with accountability. And that is the only way higher educational institutions can grow in our country. We need to respect their autonomy. We should not be micromanaging the efforts of the universities and they should take charge of the efforts of how education is conducted in their educational institutions.
11. When can expect the proposed Higher Education Commission of India to come into force?
The Higher Education Commission of India is proposed in the NEP and both the Ministry of Education and the UGC are working seriously on that. Multiple regulators controlling different kinds of education in the country are actually creating a lot of challenges for the stakeholders. It introduces delays and paperwork. So the HECI will have four verticals — regulatory, accreditation, granting vertical for funds and the standard setting vertical. These will be functional once HECI once comes into existence through an act of parliament. I am sure it will allow higher education in India to progress at a rapid rate.
Courtesy : Edex