UGC drafts guidelines on starting Indian heritage and culture courses, enrolling artists in HEIs

NEW DELHI: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has issued draft guidelines for introducing courses on Indian heritage and culture and empaneling artists as artist-in-residence in higher educational institutions. The commission has invited feedback on the draft “guidelines for introducing courses based on Indian heritage and culture and “guidelines to empanel local artists/artisans as artist-as-residence in higher educational institutions” by March 31, 2023.

“The draft ‘Guidelines for introducing courses based on Indian heritage and culture’ are available on the UGC website www.ugc.ac.in . Feedback/suggestions are invited from the stakeholders and the same may be sent on the ugc.heritage.culture@gmail.com latest by 31.03.2023,” said UGC in an official notice.

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The commission added that in line with the National Education Policy (NEP), it has come up with these guidelines on courses such as universal human values, vedic mathematics, yoga, ayurveda, sanskrit, Indian languages, music and classic dance forms to attract international students to India. The guidelines will allow colleges and universities to offer customized courses to students as credit-based modular programmes.

In another notice, UGC stated, “The draft ‘guidelines to empanel local artists/artisans as artist-as-residence in higher educational institutions’ are available on the UGC website www.ugc.ac.in. Feedback/suggestions are invited from the stakeholders and the same may be sent on the ugc.localartist@gmail.com latest by 31.03.2023.”

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The commission said that the guidelines on empaneling local artists will let HEIs “harness the creative talent and intellectual resources available within the country” which are not formally connected to the education system. This will help improve the quality of teacher training and research.

“Art forms are an integral part of human civilization. The National Education Policy (NEP-2020) emphasises to bridge gap between higher education and arts (kala),” said UGC. Accordingly, it has prepared the draft guidelines.