Despite the ministry allowing them to grant degrees to their students, IIMs have not yet arrived at a consensus on the matter.
HRD Ministry
MHRD’s Death Sentence for Affordable Education – Autonomy
The government’s non-committal attitude towards education makes it look like a ploy to privatize education.
HRD Ministry to Work on Easing Visa Processes
Source: Economic Times
The HRD Ministry intends on making it easier for foreign faculty to get visas.
Panel’s Draft National Education Policy To Be Submitted By March
Source: NDTV
The HRD Ministry-appointed panel tasked with drafting a new National Education Policy will submit its report in March next year.
India’s 1st Exclusively Tribal University
Source: Study International
The institute claims to be the world’s largest tribal school, providing education to over 27,000 students.
No Plans to Replace UGC, AICTE With Single Regulator
Source: Mint
The government is not considering any merger of the UGC and the AICTE into a single higher education regulator at present.
Research in Higher Ed A Must for Sustainable Growth
Source: Times of India
Delivering a memorial lecture in honour of Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar pitched for promoting research and innovation also to combat brain drain and insisted on improving the quality of education from primary to higher education. Noting that India and China prospered on the back of reverse engineering and low wages, he stressed encouraging research in the higher education in the country to ensure sustainable growth.
For the full article, visits the Times of India online.
IISc Bangalore Best Uni; Miranda House Top College
Source: Hindustan Times
The human resource development ministry has released the India Rankings 2017 of National Institutional Ranking Framework- NIRF in New Delhi.
UGC draft on twinning okayed by Law Ministry
Source: Reuters via India Newswatch
The Law Ministry has approved the UGC draft regulations on twinning arrangement paving the way for educational courses to be offered by foreign universities in India and vice-versa from forthcoming academic session.
The draft is now with the HRD Ministry awaiting final approval and then notification to allow the top 500 universities across the world to start courses will follow. The regulations include process to initiate even undergraduate courses in Indian universities.
“The UGC has been given the mandate for final word in this regard. The foreign universities will be governed by the UGC,” said a top HRD Ministry official.
According to UGC, “twinning” is an arrangement by an Indian University or institution with a foreign institution or university to offer academic programmes either jointly or independently in India or abroad.
The HRD Ministry had asked the UGC to identify possibilities within the existing laws of regulating and allowing the foreign educational institutions to India. With uncertainty over the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010, in Rajya Sabha, the HRD Ministry has now allowed foreign institutions to enter under different arrangements.
So far, private universities in India are in collaboration with institutions from abroad bypassing the Indian Government. Following rampant violations, the Centre had asked the UGC to regulate foreign institutions entering India. At the same time a cap that arrangement has to be only from top 500 universities world over has been mooted.
About 600 foreign education providers are presently operating in the country through various arrangements completely ignorant of the rules and law of the country facilitated by Indian institutions.
HRD Minister Kapil Sibal during his visit to United States in June 2012 announced entry of eight select institutions as part of educational partnership under First Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative. Further, admissions for academic programmes offered through twinning programme will be sans the reservation policy of Government of India.
TCS Insights: The regulation, which only allows the top 500 universities (as listed in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking and the Shanghai Jiaotong ranking) to offer twinning programs, has been approved by the Indian Law Ministry. If approved by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the fate of about 600 foreign universities that partner with Indian universities will need to be determined. This regulation has received strong opposition from international education providers, including Canada, the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia. The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service in India is awaiting confirmation of next steps and is advocating, along with our friendly competitors, on this issue with MHRD and the University Grants Commission (UGC).
LLM to be a one-year course
Source: The Times of India via PwC – EdLive
The Masters in Law (LLM) programme will now be of one-year duration instead of two.
The UGC has given its nod for this. The aim behind the move is to stop the best legal minds from going abroad to pursue similar programme in less time and retain the best talents in the field. According to the prevailing system, a student has to spend at least seven to eight years after intermediate to gain a masters degree in law. The UGC had set up an expert committee under N R Madhava Menon, Founding Vice Chancellor, National Law School of India University, Bangalore to examine the proposal. The committee endorsed the move and recently submitted its report to the UGC. The committee was set up after the HRD Ministry had backed recommendations made by the roundtable on legal education in 2009. Only India, Bangladesh and Pakistan impart two-year LLM. The duration had led to students taking up master’s programme in universities abroad.
Mandatory accreditation for polytechnic institutes mooted
Source: The Times of India via PwC – EdLive
If the HRD Ministry has its way, polytechnic institutions in the country will soon be required to undergo mandatory accreditation and assessment by an industry-sponsored agency recognised by the AICTE. The state boards of technical education will be involved in such rating exercises.
As of now, the National Board of Accreditation assesses the courses offered by polytechnics, but the process is not mandatory. The rating from such assessment is given to individual courses and not to the institutions. The Ministry plans to implement reforms such as textbooks for polytechnic subjects in vernacular languages, information and communication technology-enabled classrooms, mentoring polytechnics by established colleges or universities, dual- track education involving mandatory apprenticeship with the industry and a shift from the examination-based assessment and evaluation system to the continuous competency-based assessment.