‘UGC recognised colleges can offer ‘degree programmes’ whereas unrecognised can offer only certificates or diplomas’

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: A controversy the University Grants Commission (UGC) continuously gets mired in is the incidents of ragging taking place on college campuses and in hostels across the country. Recent cases have brought to the front a new issue, namely to have a common policy against ragging, irrespective of whether the college falls under UGC, MCI, AICTE or any other guidelines. This week, UGC, along with all 15 professional councils and 8 state councils of higher education/state advisory boards, will convene to discuss draft regulations on curbing the menace of ragging in higher educational institutions. Sukhadeo Thorat, chairman of the UGC in a conversation with FE’s Malvika Chandan talked about other challenges facing higher education in the country. Excerpts:

What are the main challenges faced by the UGC today?

Over the last 15 to 20 years higher education has been ignored in the country. Issues are various, including lower access in interior parts, poor quality, and unequal access to minorities. In India, as per the last count, our gross enrolment ratio (GER), which is a ratio of persons enrolled in higher education institutions to total population of the persons in age group of 18-23 years is about 11%.

This is a dismal number, if we consider the world average of 23.2, developed countries’ average of 54.6 and 36.5 in countries in transition. To make matters worse, 373 of 600 districts in India have a lower GER of 3% to 9% than the all India enrolment average. Our key focus in the coming years as highlighted in the 11th Plan will be to increase the GER across India to 21% by the end of the 12th plan with an interim target of 15% by 2012.

How do you plan to achieve this target?

Part of the plan is to have the 15 new central universities up and running and also the 370 model colleges in place. Some of the things we will be focusing on going forward are making college education more relevant and students more employable. To do so we are making some key academic reforms such as putting in place a semester system with focus on internal exams, credit recognition thus encouraging mobility and also having career development courses focusing on soft skills, work values etc. These reforms are already taking place in 70 universities of the 431 universities in India.