INDIA: Higher education regulator winds down

13 February 2011

The wait has begun for the quiet burial of the country's apex higher education regulator. In a clear signal of the winding down of the 54-year-old behemoth, the government plans to avoid appointing a full-fledged chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) after economist Sukhdeo Thorat, reports Charu Sudan Kasturi for Hindustan Times.

The proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) will subsume many of the roles of the UGC and other regulators, including the All India Council for Technical Education. "But the end of the UGC is more than just the creation of a new regulator. It epitomises the end of an era when the government micro-managed higher education. We now want to act as a facilitator," a senior government official said.

While the NCHER will set standards in higher education, the new regulator will relinquish direct control of many other functions of the UGC, including funding universities and testing candidates for teaching jobs.
Full report on the Hindustan Times site

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