New Maharashtra body will set common academic framework, calendar for state universities, colleges

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra government will set up a body to develop a mechanism for students to shift from one university to another while carrying the credits they earned – a key provision of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

The advisory body, named Maharashtra State Academic and Research Council (MahaSARC), will create academic equivalence across various programmes offered by different universities in Maharashtra. It will also be responsible for issuing guidelines for credit transfer at different educational levels, as envisaged under the National Credit Framework (NCrF). It will also facilitate collaborative research between state varsities.

The new body comes almost a year after most colleges and universities across the state began rolling out the NEP-aligned courses. The state government has already notified a suggestive curriculum and credit framework to ensure some degree of homogeneity across state universities in the new programmes. It has also announced the formation of virtual Boards of Studies (eBoS) for universities to coordinate during curriculum development.

According to a government resolution (GR) issued on Wednesday, MahaSARC will act as an advisory body to the Maharashtra State Commission for Higher Education and Development (MAHED), a multi-ministry body led by the chief minister.

The body will comprise vice chancellors (VC) of five state universities, to be chosen based on their NIRF ranking or NAAC grading as well as the VC of Sir JJ School of Art, Architecture & Applied Art. One of them will be designated chairperson for one year. It will also have bureaucrats, educationists and varsity officer bearers.

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Maharashtra: MahaSARC functions

The MahaSARC has been tasked with creating curricular framework guidelines, which will be binding on all state public universities and autonomous colleges in Maharashtra.

The body will also create a common academic calendar for all varsities so that the students could pursue different courses from different universities, while benefiting from NEP’s multiple entry and exit option. It will also frame policies and guidelines to define the criteria, quality benchmarks, framework, assessment guidelines, NCrF level, and structured templates for online courses available on various platforms.

The GR also says that the body will develop a standardised approval template for assessing learning outcomes, curriculum depth, assessment and evaluation methods, pedagogical approach, and industry relevance for various programmes. The varsities are expected to use these guidelines to develop the mechanism for the academic equivalence of credits, design of programme educational objectives (PEOs), course outcomes (COs), programme outcomes (POs) and development of assessment systems.

Among other tasks, the committee will prepare frameworks for training needs analysis (TNA), andfFaculty training and development plans. Promoting university-industry linkages and research and innovation are some of the other responsibilities.

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Maharashtra hub for foreign universities

Meanwhile, the state government has decided to rope in the global consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to help develop an ‘educational hub’ in the state where foreign universities could set up their campuses. The hub will be established near Navi Mumbai, at a place dubbed ‘Third Mumbai’.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that the government has entered into an understanding with five foreign universities, which are in the top 50 ranks globally. Of the five, three universities are from the United States, and one each from Australia and the United Kingdom, he said without identifying the institutes.