Government considers relaxing deemed universities’ norms

Deemed universities in the country may soon see better days with the government looking to relax some of the norms governing them and readying a plan to curtail the University Grants Commission’s powers to regulate them, writes Prashant K Nanda for Livemint.

The government is of the view that the higher education regulator has mishandled some of the issues related to deemed universities and has not put in place a proper system for these institutions, two government officials said, requesting anonymity.

The moves assume significance as the University Grants Commission, or UGC, has gotten into a legal tangle with some reputed deemed universities like the Birla Institute of Technology and Science or BITS, Pilani; Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai; and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. In November, the UGC wrote to 10 institutions asking them to shut down their off-campus centres for “violating” rules. These institutions approached the human resource development ministry denying they had flouted the rules as the campuses were in existence before the regulations came in. BITS even got a stay on the directive from court.
Full report on the Livemint site