UGC’s 180-degree turn

The deadlock between the University Grants Commission and Delhi University over the national education regulator’s directive to scrap the university’s four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) and replace it with the old three-year undergraduate programme has finally ended, but the episode left many students in the lurch. Had the stand-off been about the merits of the FYUP, things would have been different. Instead, it reflected an ad-hoc, callous and arbitrary approach toward higher education in India and showed the degree of derision with which we treat our universities and their decisions.

What cannot be overlooked is the fact that the FYUP programme was approved by the academic council and the executive council of the university, which are statutory bodies under the Delhi University Act of 1922, though it was not approved by the Visitor of the University — the President of India. The UGC has known about the programme all this time and in fact, as has been reported widely, it has maintained that universities have the right to choose the duration of their academic programmes.

So, the question to be asked is this: what prompted the UGC to take a 180-degree turn on this issue after one year? Did it discover some new facts that were not known to it in 2013, when FYUP was rolled out, to come to the conclusion that this programme is in violation of the national policy on education that provides for the 10+2+3 format? The answer seems to be ‘no.’ All material available in the public domain shows that many people, including some of the members of the UGC, had objected to the FYUP on this very ground when it was being introduced in 2013.