The university grants commission (UGC) has told all universities to initiate certain academic changes from this year.
Commission seeks to bring uniformity in higher education system
NEW DELHI: The university grants commission (UGC) has told all universities to initiate certain academic changes from this year. The reforms include a merit-based admission policy, semester system for exams, grading system for evaluation, curricular flexibility, credit system and a uniform academic calendar. All central, deemed and private universities under the UGC are expected to complete the reforms by the end of the 11th five-year plan.
While the government claims the reforms are aimed at having a uniform education pattern and increasing the employability of undergrads and postgrads, the move is being also seen as a follow-up of the Washington Accord to which India was granted temporary membership last year.
The Washington Accord is an international agreement between countries accrediting academic engineering programmes at the university level. The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and the All-India Council for Technical Education were granted a provisional membership of the accord in June 2007. This would facilitate mobility of engineering graduates and professionals at the international level and graduates from NBA-accredited programmes will be automatically accepted for education and employment in other member countries such as the US, UK, Germany, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
However, India has to in the next two years bring its academic programmes, curriculum and syllabus and examination and evaluation systems to the international level and revise its accreditation system to make it fully outcome-based.
The UGC wants admission to high-level research courses such as MPhil and PhD to be transparent, based on entrance examinations and interviews. Doctorate scholars should do course work in addition to writing dissertations. For undergraduate and postgraduate courses, a system of continuous internal assessment should replace the present annual examinations and a semester system should be adopted.
“We have to gradually move to a system which emphasises on continuous internal assessment and reduces the written examination component. Duration of the semester and number of contact hours per paper, per semester need to be prescribed unambiguously," UGC chairman Sukhadeo Thorat said.
As per guidelines, the universities will have to gradually move away from the marks and division system in evaluation and introduce a grading system, preferably on a nine-point scale, and cumulative grade point score to bring the evaluation system on a par with the best practices.
p_vineeta@dnaindia.net
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