Ludhiana: Educators flay UGC’s decision to allow bi-annual college intakes

Academicians unwelcome the decision of the University Grants Commission (UGC) to allow the higher educational institutions to open admissions twice a year as many of them have expressed their concerns about its implementation at the ground level.

Educators said this decision has to be in sync with the examination cycle of schools and also considering the staff crunch in educational institutions, biannual admissions would be extremely difficult to implement.

A member of the Punjab and Chandigarh College Teachers’ Union (PCCTU) said, “The advent of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has already brought along several problems for the teachers and students, be it changing nomenclature or keeping important and in-demand subjects out of the main basket. The implementation of NEP has been an exhausting and difficult task and now the biannual admissions will only add to the misery of educational institutions.”

Avtar Singh, principal of Guru Teg Bahadur National College, Dakha, highlighted the difficulties and said, “UGC has taken inspiration from the international system of education where they admit students twice a year but here in India, especially in Punjab, it is practically extremely difficult as it would require double the existing resources and infrastructure. It would be comparatively convenient for the private universities and HEIs in big cities where the students from all corners of the nation are admitted in bulk.”

Varun Goel, executive member of the Central Committee of PCCTU, questioned the ability of educational institutions to run two semesters parallelly despite lack of resources. “Colleges here do not have enough faculty to cater to the students admitted in between the academic year,” he informed.

Stressing the inability of the education department to deal with the existing issues, Tarun Ghai, spokesperson of the Association of Unaided College Teachers (AUCT), Punjab and Chandigarh, said, “The staff is not being paid as per the existing rules and with the existing staff crunch, they expect the colleges to implement biannual admissions, which is not possible.”

However, a senator of the Panjab University (PU), on the condition of anonymity, said just like NEP, adequate time would be available with the higher educational institutions to implement the biannual admissions. “There are two ways to do so, one is to admit the students in a new semester which would start from January and another way is to enrol them in the existing session, and they can complete their credits in summer classes when the rest of the students have their vacations. This would entirely depend on the higher educational institutions as per the availability of faculty and other resources,” the senator informed.