New Delhi: The University Grants Commission (UGC) on Tuesday released guidelines for Higher Educational Institutions (HEI). The guidelines aim at cultivating academic and research excellence.
The guidelines have been framed as per the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 ,which recognises the importance of Institutional Development Plans (IDP).
The NEP also recommends that each institution will make a strategic IDP with the joint participation of Board members, institutional leaders, faculty, students, and staff.
Enabling the Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) to undertake the academic and professional excellence journey is at the heart of these guidelines. The vision of the NEP 2020, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Natioonal Credit Framework (NCrF) and Integration with the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) among other anchors, lie at the core in the pursuit of higher level goals. The NEP 2020, seeks to transform higher education by focussing on skill-based education to meet the needs of the industry and the economy.
The NEP 2020 enunciates that Quality Higher Education needs to aim to develop good, thoughtful, well-rounded, and creative individuals. HEIs need to enable an individual to study one or more specialized areas of interest at a deep level and also develop character, ethical and constitutional values, intellectual curiosity, scientific temper, creativity, spirit of service and 21st-century capabilities across a range of disciplines including sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities, languages, as well as professional, technical, and vocational subjects.
The UGC has sought to provide guidelines for individual HEIs to develop their own Institutional Development Plans to further these aims set out in the NEP 2020.
