UGC- AICTE Merger New Body Likely to Look Into Higher Education Standards

All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) has now been updated with the duties of the new body.
A new body will be formed in place of the Higher Education Quality Control Centres in India.
The new bodies will be known as the Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) and Professional Standard-Setting Bodies (PSSBs)

There will be one single regulator National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA) for the higher education sector, there will be bodies under it to look into quality maintenance of institutions.

PSSB will be responsible for looking into upholding 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

At present, UGC helps to maintain standards in university education across the country. On the other hand, AICTE serves as an accreditation body for engineering, management, hospitality and other technical institutes across the country.

Earlier, the AICTE-UGC merger had been sent to the cold storage due to a lack of consensus among the two entities on what will the new entity’s role be. However, the National Education Policy has mandated this merger which could be implemented in FY21.

After this, PSSB will be set up and there could be regional chapter looking at different streams of education and setting minimum deliverables for each institute operating in that domain.

One of the duties of the new quality-assurance body is to determine the different areas, courses as well as institutes that require routine checks for quality. The institutes will be receiving incentives for maintaining the standards, however, those who fail to meet the standards will have to face the consequences or action will be taken against them.

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