Centre Likely To Give Its Nod To Overarching Higher Education Body In October

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet is likely to clear a proposal in the first week of October for the merger of UGC and AICTE into a single body regulating both technical and higher educational institutes in the country.

Once the proposal is vetted, a bill will be introduced in the winter session of Parliament. “The objective is to see the new education body is up and running from the 2020-21 academic session,” said a source in the HRD Ministry.

The development comes against the backdrop of the draft national higher education policy suggesting creation of an overarching body by combining the resources of both UGC and AICTE.

The likely provisions of the overarching body:

It would solely be responsible for ensuring standards of higher education in the country.

Unlike UGC, it may not have powers to allocate funds to the universities. The source said fund allocation could be directly dealt with by the HRD Ministry.

Some media reports have suggested that the merger could create new bodies such as the Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) and Professional Standard-Setting Bodies (PSSBs). The PSSBs will be conducting regular checks on institutes for maintaining standards. The existing institutes such as UGC and AICTE have no such mechanism.

The list of blacklisted institutes will be revisited afresh after the formation of the new regulator. At present, there are over 1000 institutes blacklisted both by UGC and AICTE.