New Delhi: In an initiative to bring transparency about Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across India, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced that it will release a set of guidelines ‘Minimum-Mandatory Disclosure’.
With this, all HEIs including colleges and universities in the country will have to disclose their fee structure, fee refund policy, hostel facilities, scholarship programs, and other details including NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) and NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) rankings on their official website.
UGC Chairman Professor M Jagadesh Kumar said, “Of late different stakeholders in the higher education system like prospective students, parents, research scholars, government officials, alumni, and the public at large desire to seek certain basic information from the websites of different Universities/HEIs.
“We have found that the websites of several universities lack basic minimum information related to their institute and many times their websites are not functional or updated”.
“At this defining moment, when we are celebrating the third year of the National Education Policy 2020, it would be prudent to desire that HEIs provide basic minimum information and updated content on their websites”.
“Hence, we have prepared a checklist of this information to be provided by the universities on their websites.”
The UGC has prepared a detailed document on the information that needs to be disclosed on the websites of the HEIs, which it will make public in a few days for feedback. The UGC has sent this document to all institutions.
The document states that the ‘Minimum Mandatory Disclosure’ rule for HEIs will mandate that the institutions have an ‘About us’ page, Act and Statutes or MoA and information regarding the Institutional Development Plan, Annual Reports, Constituent Units, Affiliated Colleges, Off-campus and Off-shore campus.
According to the UGC, the universities and colleges will also have to upload profiles of senior administrative officials like the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Registrar, etc.
The institutions will also be required to upload details of academic programs, academic calendars, schools/departments/centres, faculty details with photographs, admissions, and fees along with other important details, the UGC said.
With inputs from IANS