The introduction of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for admission to undergraduate students, which had a rocky start, a delayed academic calendar, higher education reforms including twin-degree programs with foreign universities, and the transition to four-year UG degrees were among among the highlights in the education sector this year.
While the CBSE and CISCE board exams reverted to the format of a single exam in a year instead of split terms, the NCERT deleted sections on the 2002 Gujarat riots, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement and Mughal courts from his class 12 textbooks as part of his “syllabus rationalization” exercise.
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The CBSE also removed chapters on the Non-Aligned Movement, the Rise of Islamic Empires in Afro-Asian Territories, and the Industrial Revolution from its history and political science syllabi for grades 11 and 12.
Similarly, in the class 10 syllabus, the topic ‘impact of globalization on agriculture’ was removed from a chapter on ‘Food Security’. Translated extracts from two poems in Urdu by Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the section ‘Religion, Communism and Politics – Communalism, Secular State’ were also excluded this year.
The government decided to remove several discretionary quotas, including that of MPs for admission to Kendriya Vidyalayas, a decision that helped free up more than 40,000 seats in the centrally funded schools.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) announced in March that undergraduate admissions at central universities across the country will not be based on Class 12 grades, but through CUET.
Emerging as the second largest admissions test in the country, the debut edition of CUET-UG was marred by several glitches that caused exam cancellations and aspirants to worry and struggle. While several students were notified of cancellations the night before the exam, many of the centers were turned down due to cancellations.
UGC president M Jagadesh Kumar had said the exam was canceled in certain centers after reports of “sabotage”. He also claimed that the technical glitches in the early stages of CUET-UG are not “setbacks but lessons” as the committee put forward a proposal to merge the JEE technical entrance exam and NEET medical entrance exam into CUET in the future.
The difficult debut of the CUET-UG delayed the admission process at several universities and the start of the academic session was pushed back to November instead of July.
The school and university classrooms came back to life this year after a nearly two-year hiatus from offline classes due to the Covid pandemic.
The government also came down heavily on the unregulated edtech sector, announcing that it is working on a policy to regulate the edtech platforms, which have invaded the academic space in a big way during the pandemic.
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The UGC and technical education regulator AICTE warned their accredited varsities and institutions against offering courses in distance learning and online mode in partnership with Ed-tech companies, saying no “franchise” agreement is allowed under the standards.
The UGC paved the way for Indian and foreign higher education institutions to offer joint or double degrees and twinning programs.
Also the first, the government decided to allow students to take two full-time courses of the same level in physical mode at the same time, either in the same university or in different universities.
The universities began their transition to the four-year undergraduate program (FYUP), with the UGC later issuing guidelines stating that the honors courses must be four-year degrees.
However, the committee later clarified that the three-year undergraduate courses will not be discontinued until the four-year program is fully implemented, and under the new pattern, graduates can directly enter Ph.D programs.
During the year, universities and higher education institutions across the country were also allowed to create up to 25 percent supernumerary seats for foreign students in their undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) programs.
The government also nodded to varsities for hiring leading experts as faculty members in the “Professors of Practice (PoP) in Universities and Colleges” category for which formal academic qualification and publication requirements will not be mandatory.
Under new guidelines communicated by UGC, experts in engineering, science, media, literature, entrepreneurship, social sciences, fine arts, civil services and armed forces are eligible to be hired under the category.
To initiate the process of formalizing standards for setting up offshore campuses of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the government had set up a 17-member committee which made crucial recommendations.
The offshore campuses of IITs can be named as “India International Institute of Technology” and faculty members from the prestigious institutes of technology here can be sent abroad as deputies. While the IITs abroad may be free to determine student strength, the percentage of Indian students in those institutes should be less than 20 percent, the panel had recommended.
Several IITs have received requests from Middle Eastern and South Asian countries to set up their campuses. While IIT Delhi is considering setting up a campus in the UAE, IIT Madras is exploring options in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Tanzania.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and was published from a syndicated news agency feed)