AICTE-UGC Merger: The merger of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and University Grants Commission (UGC) will look at the standards of higher education institutions in India.
According to reports in MoneyControl, with the merger of AICTE and UGC, there will be one single regulator National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA) for the higher education sector which will look after quality management in institutions.
Earlier, the Indian government was preparing to drop its ambitious plan to set up a single higher education regulator to replace existing regulatory bodies like the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The government was instead hoping to attempt a quick revamp of UGC, AICTE and the National Council of Technical Education as it goes into the election year.
Once and if the merger of UGC and AICTE takes place, new bodies called the Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) and Professional Standard-Setting Bodies (PSSBs) will be set up.
Currently, the UGC assists in maintaining standards in university education across the country while the AICTE serves as an accreditation body for engineering, management, hospitality and other technical colleges across the country.
No inspections are carried by the governing body resulting in poor quality concerns at several higher education institutions. The human resource development ministry is keen to address these concerns because they want to attract more international students to the country.
Once UGC and AICTE are merged, the new quality maintaining body is likely to identify regions, courses and institutes that need to be looked at on a regular basis. There would be incentives for maintaining the standards while there could be disincentives for poor quality institutes.
Via: Money Control
