UGC Guidelines for Multidisciplinary Higher Education

March 7, 2022

The University Grants Commission (UGC) released ‘Draft Guidelines for Transforming Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) into Multidisciplinary Institutions’ and invited public feedback.

About the guidelines

  • The guidelines aim at promoting higher education institutions to offer courses in diverse subjects raise and break the silos present in higher education.
  • UGC formulated three approaches to transform HEIs into multidisciplinary institutions:
    1. Academic collaboration between colleges and universities.
    2. Merging single-stream institutions with other multidisciplinary institutions.
    3. Strengthen the institutions through additions of departments in subjects.
  • Colleges that are affiliated to universities can offer multidisciplinary education and elevate their status to that of degree-awarding autonomous colleges. Colleges can also form clusters to overcome their institutional weaknesses, which are hindering their entry into the field of multidisciplinary higher education.
  • Colleges or universities can collaborate to offer dual degrees. There will be single admission process for two institutions. For dual-degree, a student can complete one degree at host institution and second one at partner institution.
  • UGC will identify the colleges and universities that can be transformed into robust multidisciplinary higher education institutions.

About UGC

  • UGC is a statutory body established by the UGC Act 1956. It is under the Ministry of Education. UGC’s mandate is coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of higher education in India. UGC provides recognition to universities in India.
  • Earlier, a bill was proposed to replace UGC with a new regulatory organization called Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). However, there was huge opposition to the bill.

National Education Policy, 2020 has also envisaged that by 2030 there should be at least one large multidisciplinary higher education institution in or near every district.

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