Batting for Students
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 07 2015 -
The recent instruction given by University Grants Commission (UGC) to all the vice chancellors of universities asking them to ensure their institutes to display detailed fee structure and other expenses along with admission procedure and placement records on their websites is a welcome step taken by the commission.
The step is expected to immensely benefit the students as most admission seekers in the country after passing out from schools are not given adequate information on the selection of institutes of their choice.
With the mushrooming of hundreds of private institutes, the task of admission seekers have been made even more difficult. While most of the private institutes are good at attracting young students with a barrage of information, there is always a danger of being misled.
The UGC has the unique distinction of not only grant-giving agency in the country but also has the mandate to coordinate, determine and maintain standards in institutes of higher education.
The UGC’s instruction followed complaints about institutes concealing information and misleading parents and their wards on tuition fee and other expenses.
It should be noted that several advocacy groups had also demanded transparency in deciding fee structure by professional colleges and other institutes.
They had asked the authorities to penalise institutes that failed to follow certain norms.
Another commendable instruction given by the UGC was to display the profile of teachers, research output of the institute and placement profile of the former students of the institutes.
The UGC also has asked the universities to report back within 15 days with all the information on the departments, which have been recognised as centres of excellence by funding agencies besides scholarships available.
Details of students' grievance redressal mechanism, research output and academic calendar are some of the other points which had to be furnished by the universities in their website.
Facilities for students like hostels, transport, all relevant approval of statutory bodies and name of nodal officers for students facilitation services should also be provided on the website.
It may be recalled that HRD Ministry had recently encouraged the students to visit the 'know your college' portal, a single source platform to get information on more than 10,500 colleges which conduct about 14,000 programmes in technical education.
The recent moves made by authorities for the general welfare of the students needs to be appreciated while keeping a check on the usefulness of existing curricula for a wholesome development of students into responsible citizens.
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