Indore (Madhya Pradesh): University Grants Commission chairman Jagadesh Kumar red flagged the annual system in institutes of higher learning stating that it’s against the spirit of the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020.
“NEP advocates for continuous evaluation of students which is possible only in semester system and not annual system. So, UG and PG courses should be run as per time-tested and globally accepted term system,” he told reporters.
Kumar is in the city to participate in two different programmes. He said that the states which are running annual system of exams in UG and PG courses should shift to the semester system else the purpose of NEP-2020 would remain defeated.
Madhya Pradesh, which boasts of being the first state in the country to implement NEP-2020, runs UG courses under annual system. The state ran semester system in UG and PG courses from 2008 to 2016 but had scrapped it for traditional UG courses following protests of ABVP.
Kumar stated that the states which have not launched the NEP-2020 should do the needful at the earliest so as to have an academic equivalence in scheme of exams. The UGC chairman also pitched for more autonomy to colleges asking universities to not put a check on the institutes approved to have autonomous status by the Commission.
To a query regarding MP government forcing the state universities to have unified syllabi across the state, Kumar stated that the state governments should not encroach upon academic autonomy of institutions. He also hoped that the country will meet the target of 50 per cent gross enrolment ratio (GER) by 2035 by promoting digital education.
“We can’t increase academic infrastructure to take GER from existing 29 per cent to 50 per cent by 2035 so digital courses is the only solution in sight,” he added.
