JOIN USThis will encourage inter-disciplinary approaches to frontier areas of learning in elite colleges as students would then be able to get honours in two different subjects at a time, they underlined.
The vice-chancellors also recommended that autonomous colleges should switch to offering 4-year degree programmes from the current 3-year and meritorious students with 4-year degree should be admitted directly to the PhD programmes with one year course duration.
To keep school education and undergraduate education relevant, admissions to higher courses should be based on school/undergraduate level examinations and entrance examinations at 1:1 ratio, they suggested.
To create effective teachers at the school level, a 4-year BSc- BEd and BA-BEd degree programmes should be initiated in the universities and colleges as an “integrated model” of professionalising teacher education, they added.
These recommendations were made at a national conference, organised by the ministry of Human Resource development and participated by nearly 250 vice-chancellors of central and state universities. The University Grants Commission (UGC) is seeking opinion from all the stakeholders in this regard.
The vice-chancellors also recommended that semester system—two semesters in an academic year—should be implemented across all the central and state universities “without any further delay” and courses revised at least every three years.
A minimum of 180 days of teaching per year should be assured in colleges, universities and institutions. “Every teacher should mark his or her attendance at the work place. Regularity in teaching should be monitored and recorded,” they stressed.
Monitoring entrance tests
Every university and institution, currently, tends to have its own entrance examination. “The quality of these examinations is not monitored. There should be well organised national level examinations and universities should be encouraged to subscribe to them. The central universities should take the lead in this regard,” they suggested.
The vice-chancellors pointed out that the existing schemes by the UGC for upgrading infrastructure and teaching in colleges and universities in rural, remote and educationally backward areas are inadequate.
“More resources should be allocated to this activity. In general, upgradation of affiliated colleges should be a major activity in the 12th five year plan,” they recommended.
The Centre must support state universities through additional grants. They added: “This support should be in two forms—those that have excellence should be provided additional funding for reaching higher standards, those that are in remote or under-developed areas should be provided additional funding for improving standards.”