UGC launches guidelines to boost multidisciplinary education

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has released a set of guidelines to transform higher educational institutions into institutes for multidisciplinary education. The guidelines state that as per the recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP), institutions will be recognised under three categories namely teaching-intensive universities, research-intensive universities and degree-awarding autonomous universities.

Commenting on the same, UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar said that before this, all affiliated autonomous colleges in India, which total up to 2035 colleges, must become autonomous degree-awarding institutes. In order to make this possible, the draft guidelines states, “When a higher educational institute (HEI) becomes a constituent college of the large university, it may collaborate with other constituent colleges of the university or open new departments to achieve the status of multidisciplinary HEI.”

The draft also mentions “mobility of credits between institutions” as one of the features of a multidisciplinary institute. It refers to the Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) as a platform that “shall provide the facility and functionality for a student to open an academic account and to get onboard of eligible HEIs” and directs that all HEIs will have to register in the ABC to enable this.