University Grants Commission (UGC) Cluster College Plan

Table of Contents

University Grants Commission (UGC)

University Grants Commission was set up by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education as a statutory body under the University Grants Commission Act 1956.
University Grants Commission Functions: To coordinate, determine and maintain the standards of university education in India.
University Grants Commission channels public funds (grants) to higher education institutions in the country.

University Grants Commission: Clustering Plan

Multi-disciplinary Institutions: The move is aimed at transforming colleges and universities into multi-disciplinary
Closely located institutions can collaborate with each other to offer innovative programmes in offline, online or distance learning mode.
Merger of institutions: University Grants Commission has also recommended merger of single-stream institutions with other multi-disciplinary institutions under the same management or different managements.
Student orientation: University Grants Commission Student orientation programmes should be conducted to familiarise them with the new options available.
Faculty capacity building: Training has to be provided to the teachers to enable them to teach, train and research in multidisciplinary academic programmes.

University Grants Commission: Reasons

National Education Policy 2020: University Grants Commission Clustering multi-disciplinary institutions in India is one of the recommendations for higher education in the National Education Policy 2020.
- All higher education institutions (HEIs) have to become multi-disciplinary by 2030.
Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER): University Grants Commission goal is to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education including vocational education from 3% (2018) to 50% by 2035.
- A large number of new institutions will have to be developed to attain these goals.

University Grants Commission: Benefits

Increase student enrollment: Initially, colleges in cluster will function as affiliated colleges of the university and share their resources to offer multi-disciplinary programmes and guide student research
- Subsequently, the cluster of colleges may be given autonomy in a graded manner before turning into an autonomous degree-granting cluster of colleges.
University Grants Commission Credit Mobility: Students who would opt for courses because of collaborations and mergers will be able to avail credit mobility between partnering institutions.
This Credit Mobility would be possible by Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) platform, developed by National e-Governance Division of the Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology (MeitY).
ABC Platform allows students to open an academic account and add HEIs of interest and store credits earned from them for receiving degrees and diplomas.
Capacity building of Teachers: The Plan also has recommended capacity-building for faculty. This will help the faculty to teach, train and research in multi-disciplinary academic programmes.
This would be possible through initiatives like Annual Refresher Programme in Teaching (ARPIT) as well as investment in learning assessment tools.
University Grants Commission give Opportunity for growth: Cluster plan can help in infrastructure expansion and increasing number of students, departments, administrative and academic functions and research activities.
Opening avenues for online education: Online Education avenues is also mentioned as a key feature of an HEI that offers multidisciplinary education.
The University Grants Commission Plan suggests that the Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) portal of the Ministry of Education can help universities provide a host of online courses through the University Grants Commission’s credit framework for SWAYAM.

University Grants Commission: Concerns

Financial resources: Colleges and other stake-holders need financial resources to sustain college clusters. There is no clarity on source of funding.
Guidelines approach: Guidelines are not enough to persuade colleges and states to follow directives. There has to be regulations to ensure that states adopt the plans.