Context: Recently University Grants Commission (UGC) has released a draft National Higher Educational Qualification Framework (NHEQF), based on National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

About Draft National Higher Educational Qualification Framework (NHEQF)

• It will act as a nationally accepted and internationally comparable and acceptable qualifications framework.
• Aim: To facilitate transparency and comparability of higher education qualifications at all levels.
• It seeks to elevate all higher education institutes to a common level of benchmarking to ensure that all institutions are providing quality education.
• It eases the integration of vocational education into higher education.
• It also prescribes the facilitative norms for issues such as credit transfer, equivalence, etc.
• It has established assessment parameters for students in higher education institutions and divided it in levels 5 to 10.
• It also fixes the number of credits required to clear the different levels of the four-year undergraduate programme, master’s degrees and doctoral degrees.

University Grants Commission (UGC)

• The University Grants Commission of India is a statutory body set up by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India in accordance to the UGC Act 1956.
• Aim: For the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education.
• Headquarters: New Delhi
• It also has six regional offices located in Bangalore, Bhopal, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune.
• The types of universities regulated by the UGC include: Central universities, state universities, Deemed Universities and Private Universities.

Functions

• Providing grants to eligible universities and colleges.
• Framing regulations on minimum standards of education.
• Advising the Central and State Governments on the measures which are necessary for the development of Higher Education.
• Monitoring developments in the field of collegiate and university education; disbursing grants to the universities and colleges.
• Serving as a vital link between the Union and state governments and institutions of higher learning.

Additional Information
Initiatives announced in the Education Sector in Budget 2022

• DESH-Stack e-portal: Digital Ecosystem for Skilling and Livelihood (DESH-Stack e-portal) will be launched to empower citizens to skill, reskill or upskill through online training.
• Digital University: A digital university will be established to provide access to world-class quality universal education to students across the country with a personalized learning experience at their doorsteps in different languages.The university will be built on a networked hub-spoke model with the collaboration of best public universities and institutions in the country.
• Virtual Labs: 750 virtual labs in science and mathematics and 75 e-labs for skilling with simulated learning environments are to be set-up in 2022-23.
• World–class foreign universities and institutions will be allowed in the GIFT City to offer courses in various subjects like Financial Management, FinTech, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
• Expansion of One Class-One TV Channel programme of PM e-VIDYA from 12 to 200 TV channels.This will enable all states to provide quality supplementary education in regional languages for classes 1-12.
• Teachers will be encouraged to develop quality e-content in different languages and different subjects so that any teacher or student can access the content from anywhere and get benefitted.
• Government will set up an animation, visual effects, gaming, and comic (AVGC) promotion task force to realize the potential of this sector. 

By: Shubham Tiwari