National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA) will be a single regulator after AICTE-UGC merger.
There will be an AICTE-UGC merger that is All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) will be a single entity. This new regulator will look at the norms of higher education institutions in the country.
This one single regulator for the higher education sector will be named as National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA). To keep quality of institutions there will be a set up of other bodies too.
After AICTE-UGC merger of new bodies will be formed. They will be named as Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) and Professional Standard Setting Bodies (PSSBs).
“PSSB will be subject for looking into supporting and maintaining standards of higher education in the country. This includes conducting regular checks at institutes to ensure that all facilities (academic curriculum, faculty, research activity), as well as infrastructure, is up to the mark,” Official Said
Present Roles of AICTE and UGC
- UGC plays an important role in maintaining standards of university education across the country.
- AICTE acts as an accreditation body for technical courses. These include engineering, hospitality, management, and other technical institutes across the country.
No inspections are conducted by regulators, due to which there are 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.
Changes After The AICTE-UGC Merger
- A single body National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA) regulating all other bodies under it.
- There will be further set up of two bodies. One replacing AICTE and the other for UGC. They will name as Education Grants Council (HEGC) and Professional Standard Setting Bodies (PSSBs).
- The new quality maintaining body is likely to identify regions, courses and institutes that need to be looked at on a regular basis.
- Incentives would be given for keeping the standards. On the other hand, there could be disincentives for a lower standard of education in institutions.
- After setting up of PSSB there could be regional chapter seeing at various streams of education. Also, introducing the least deliverables for each institution working in that area.
The AICTE-UGC merger had been sent to the back deck. Its was so because of lack of consent between the two bodies on future roles of the new entity. But this time as National Education Policy has mandated AICTE-UGC merger it will assure us for a new body.
