Soon the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) will be merged into one single body the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). The initiative will help students pick from a wide variety of subjects, as the disciplinary boundaries between subjects would blur and pave the way for adopting a multidisciplinary approach to education. It would also be a big relief for stakeholders as the age of multiple regulations in higher education will end. As an example of relief, UGC has done away with the mandatory publication of a research paper before the final submission of the Ph.D. thesis by scholars. But this was still prevailing in AICTE. Now there will be uniformity and simplicity with one regulatory body. All the courses approved by UGC, AICTE, and NCTE shall be mapped for their equivalence under the National Higher Education Qualifications Framework (NHEQF) which would make academic mobility smoother, both vertically and laterally.
We think these changes are wonderful. What do you think?
