Representative image of the UGC board.
Credit: PTI Photo
Universities will now have to disclose fee structures and refund details, annual reports, fellowship details, etc., on their portals, as per new directives from the University Grants Commission. The Minimum Mandatory Disclosure For Universities/ HEIs, which details over 60 parameters which needs to be disclosed on the websites of the institutions, will be made public by the higher institution body in the coming days for public feedback.
Profiles with pictures of the administration and academic leadership, details of Ombudsmen, of Internal Quality Assurance Cell and Complaint Committee, Anti-Ragging Cell, Equal Opportunity Cell and Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Group Cell are among those that need to be furnished. Academic programmes, Institutional Development Plan, and admission guidelines for international students are other such details.
“Of late, different stakeholders in the Higher Education System like prospective students, parents, research scholars, govt. officials, alumni and public at large desire to seek certain basic information from the websites of different universities. We have found that the websites of several universities lack not only in providing basic minimum information related to their university but also at many times their websites are not functional and updated. This causes a lot of inconveniences and uncertainty to the stakeholders,” UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said.
He added that the National Education Policy 2020 talks about transparency of such details. “This year we will be celebrating the third year of the implementation of the NEP. It would be prudent to request from the universities to provide basic minimum information and updated content on their website. We have prepared a check list of this information to be provided by the universities on their websites,” Kumar said.