The UGC on Friday released a draft revision of its guidelines for declaring higher education institutions as “deemed-to-be universities” and made “multidisciplinarity” a mandatory requirement for granting the status.

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The UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2022, which will replace the 2019 guidelines, have been modified in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. HT has seen a copy of the draft revised norms.

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The UGC has invited comments from stakeholders on the draft till November 18.

“The higher education in the country is going through a major transformation with the advent of NEP 2020. UGC has reframed/modified the University Grants Commission (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2019 to make them in tune with the broader policies of higher education as contained in the NEP, 2020,” UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said.

As per the official MHRD website, “An Institution of Higher Education, other than universities, working at a very high standard in specific area of study, can be declared by the Central Government on the advice of the UGC as an Institution ‘Deemed-to-be-university’. Institutions that are ‘deemed-to-be-university’ enjoy academic status and privileges of a university.”

There are around 170 deemed institutions in the country currently.

According to the draft, only a multi-disciplinary institution with minimum five departments offering undergraduate, postgraduate and research courses or a cluster of institutions offering five programmes located in the same city/town, will be eligible to be declared as the “deemed-to-be” university. Source: Hindustan Times

UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for the Award of Ph.D.) . 2022