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TIMES OF INDIA, Ahmedabad. 1/4/2015
UGC has failed, scrap it, says HRD committee, Akshaya Mukul, New Delhi:
One of the first committees set up by HRD minister Smriti Z Irani to
review the working of the University Grants Commission (UGC) has said
the regulator has not only “failed to fulfill its mandate but also has
not been able to deal with emerging diverse complexities“ and should be
replaced by a National Higher Education Authority.
Headed by former
UGC chairperson Hari Gautam, the committee has said any “reshaping or
restructuring“ of UGC will be a “futile“ exercise, as will be amending
the UGC Act.Therefore, it has recom mended the setting up of a new
authority through an act of Parliament and prepared a draft bill. Till
such time a body is set up, the panel says, the HRD ministry can bring
about changes in UGC through an executive order.
Ministry sources said the recommendations were “far-reaching“ and “will
be looked into seriously“.Among the committee's other suggestions are a
national research aptitude test for admission to PhD and doing away
with the 10 year criterion for professors to become vice-chancellors. It
has also emphasized teaching of yoga and transcendental meditation.
The two-volume report submitted to the ministry says UGC is “plagued in
the main by reductionism in its functioning“. “It (UGC) has
side-stepped its function of being a sentinel of excellence in education
and embraced the relatively easier function of funding education.“
Headed by former UGC chairperson Hari Gautam, the committee says the UGC
staff is unhappy as only “few find favour and are delegated with powers
to perform in important areas while many of them are left out with
hardly much to contribute... It is said that they are pushed around
through an element of fear and threat.The overall impression is that
there is a man-made crisis which seems to be cause of unhealthy ambience
and poor performance of UGC.“
Coming down heavily on the
functioning of the top levels, the committee says the UGC chairperson
“should be advised to strictly keep a vigilant track of the various
performance areas“ and “assess the contribution at all levels“. The
chairperson, it adds, should spend more time in his “seat“ than go
around the “country and the world on occasions that have not much
relevance for the system he governs“. The committee has recommended that
the chairperson's performance “be assessed once after three years and
then at the end of his tenure of five years by a committee constituted
by HRD“.
RIP UGC.
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You should also think whether it is correct or not. Because it appeared on social media on April 1, 2015 - On FOOLS DAY
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