“UGC funded institutions will continue to receive grant, concern around HEFA is misplaced”
Abhay Anand | March 8, 2019 | 05:47 PM IST
Prof Rajnish Jain, Secretary & CVO, University Grants Commission (UGC), in an exclusive conversation with Careers360, discussed the various initiatives being taken by the UGC to improve the quality of institutions. He has also addressed the concerns related to HEFA funding among higher education institutions...
Q. A major concern among most of the universities is that the money they were getting as grant from the UGC will now be sourced through HEFA, it will kind of a loan thus creating an extra financial burden on them, how justified is this concern?
A.
All the funded universities, which, so far have been receiving grant
s
from the UGC will continue to get their grants, concern
s
regarding this
is pointless.
U
niversities also receive grants through RUSA (Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan),
which is
now
in the second phase and known as
RUSA 2.0. A large number of grant
s
like the capital grants
comes
through
the
Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA).
Funds for big projects
of
universit
ies
will be through
a loan mechanism made available to them through the HEFA.
Q. The Government has announced to implement the 10% Reservation for EWS in higher education Institutions from the upcoming academic session, how it will be done?
A.
The reservation will be
implemented in all centrally funded institutions from
the upcoming academic year. T
h
is
would
result in 25 per cent
increase
in the seats to be
done over a period of two years.
Q. The Government is coming up with a Bill to replace the UGC with HECI, on the other hand, UGC is planning new initiatives, how do you see its future?
A.
Till the Bill is introduced and passed, it will be very unfair on our part to comment. Till then
we will continue to do what work is to be by the UGC for improvement of higher education in the country.
Q. Private universities have their own concerns related to funding according to Section 12B of the UGC. Are there any plans to include private universities under this scheme?
A.
This is a policy decision and it has to be discussed at length
after consultation by the
members of the Commission. Policy decisions are taken after detailed deliberation and after considering all dimensions.
A d
etail
ed
deliberation is needed, let say, on
the
financial
aspect
, regulatory
aspect
or other
i
ncen
tives
.
Q. UGC has taken steps to improve the research output, it is also working on removing predatory journals, could you elaborate on that?
A.
Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics
(CARE), an apex
two-tier body, has been
created and
assigned the task of finalisation.
CARE has
four regional centres where inputs can be given.
It will
find out the
required
measure
s
to move out the predatory or spurious journals. On the other hand, there was also
a
concern that
a number of respectable
journals were
also
included in the UGC list of predatory journals.
CARE
will also look into
this aspect
as there are some
popular
journals or magazines in particular area
s
like language
s, etc. and a number of
leading scholars have been associated with the
m. UGC will
consider those journals through recommendation of this Consortium.
Q. Every year the UGC comes up with a list of Fake Universities, but no action happens against them. What should be the measures taken in this regard?
A.
We are thinking about what more can be done against the fake universities, right now it all depends on the kind of complaints we receive. Another thing is that we cannot take direct action against a university, so recommend it to the state higher education commission.
Our role here is to write
to
the
police authorities, and other legal bodies.
Q. When is the UGC going to announce the final list of IoEs?
A
.
As per the last Commission meeting of UGC,
it
was discussed that the E
mpowered
E
xpert
C
ommittee
has recommended a total of 30 names, while the initial idea was to have 20 IoEs. We have written to the Government to give some direction on that, we are still awaiting their reply.
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