New UGC Guidelines Encourage Universities To Leverage Private Sector Partnerships For Financial Infra Development

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has approved the Guidelines for Institutional Development Plan (IDP) for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

These guidelines, approved on Tuesday (25 July), aim at enabling HEIs in achieving academic and research excellence, as well as improve teaching and learning standards.

They also provide a guidance for HEIs to exercise autonomy in academic, administrative, financial, and business matters while ensuring accountability. According to UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar, the IDP document offers clear guidance and direction to HEIs, enabling them to align their efforts towards a common vision. It outlines long-term goals, mission, and objectives, along with strategies and actions needed to achieve them, according to the UCC chairman. By adopting this IDP, HEIs can achieve effective functioning, growth, and sustainability since it provides a roadmap for success, improves resource management, and fosters a culture of accountability and continuous improvement,” Kumar said, reports The Hindu.

The guidelines emphasise the need for HEIs to identify and prioritise sources of funding for developing financial infrastructure. The sources can include government grants, alumni donations, partnerships with the private sector, and fundraising campaigns.

The guidelines suggest public funded and other higher education institutions to develop a sustainable revenue model. This model should include revenue sources such as tuition fees, government grants and subsidies, overheads from sponsored research projects, endowments, philanthropic contributions, corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds, and royalties from intellectual property.

“In a fully developed HEI, each of these sources must contribute about a similar percentage to the total revenue, depending on the size of the HEIs. Therefore, HEIs must also focus on expanding their undergraduate programmes as additional students mean more revenue,” it suggested.

These guidelines also cover planning and implementation strategies for HEIs. They require institutions to create a detailed plan of action to align existing courses with the National Education Policy, National Credit Framework, National Higher Education Qualifications Framework, and National Skills Qualifications Framework.

The guidelines also emphasise the importance of faculty development, capacity building, and training. The guidelines also address the preparation of students for new age skills, such as upskilling and rescaling the existing workforce in the economy. These guidelines will provide guidance to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) on incorporating multi-disciplinary skills, micro-credentials, and new age certificate, diploma, and degree programmes. Additionally, the guidelines aim to improve enrollment in all courses by integrating skilling.