Study Notes Key Point on Higher Education Initiative

4 min readMay 6, 2018

Education is the root of progress for any nation. The 42nd constitutional amendment act has transferred education from the state list to concurrent list. Since then along with state government; central government has also become equally committed to delivering value in the field of education.

Institutional bodies like-UGC, AICTC are also working along with the government to improve practical aspects of higher education in the country. Several premier institutes like IITs, IIMs, IISc, IISER have earned their name and make room for themselves in the list of top educational institutions of the world.

Among a series of measures to refine and boost the state of education, following are the top 10 Higher Education Initiative by the Government of India-

NIRF- National Institutional Ranking Framework
GIAN- Global Initiative for Academic Networks
UAY- Uchchtar Avishkar Yojana
IMPRINT-Impacting Research Innovation & Technology
SWAYAM- Study Web for Active Learning of Young Minds
NAD- National Academic Repository
TEQIP- Technical Education Quality Improvement Program
PMMMNMTT- Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission on Teachers & Teaching
National Digital Library Program
RUSA- Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyan

List of Higher Education Initiative

NIRF

launched on 29th September 2015 by MHRD, this framework intents to outlines a methodology for ranking the institutions across our country. The Core Committee set up by MHRD arrived at the broad level understanding and hence give overall recommendations. Then only the methodology has been driven. The objective is to identify the broad level parameters for the ranking of Indian universities and institutions. The parameters that are broadly covered include- “Teaching, Learning and Resources,” “Graduation Outcomes,” “Research and Professional Practices,” “Outreach and Inclusivity,” and the “Perception”.

GIAN

Aimed to tap the talent of the strong academic network of the country-scientists, entrepreneurs, at international level. To encourage their overall engagement with Higher Education Institutes in India so that country’s existing academic resources can be augmented and accelerate the pace of the quality reforms. Further to elevate India’s technological and scientific capacity to gain the global excellence.

Through this, the best international academic experience can be brought into our education systems. It will enable the interaction of students and the faculty with that of the world level best academic and industry experts and also learn through their experiences motivate people to draw solutions to the Indian problems.

UAY

The major objectives of the UAY scheme are to promote innovation & development in IITs addressing the issues of the manufacturing industries; to spur the innovative mindset; to coordinate the action between the academia & industry and to strengthen the labs & the research facilities.

IMPRINT

First of this kind Pan-IIT + IISc joint initiative supported by MHRD to address the major challenges in science and engineering. These challenges are must to fix and India must champion in that to enable and empower the country for self-reliance and inclusive growth. This novel type of initiative containing two-fold mandate is intended at:

(a) Developing the new engineering educational policy

(b) Creating a fine road map to pursue the engineering challenges

This scheme provides the overarching vision in higher education that can guides research into the areas which are socially relevant predominantly.

SWAYAM

A programme initiated by Government in Higher Education Sector to achieve access, equity, and quality- the three main principles of our Education Policy. Aimed to bridge the digital divide mainly for disadvantaged students and hence providing the best teaching-learning resources to all.

For that an indigenous IT platform is developed for hosting of all courses that are taught in classrooms from the 9th standard to post-graduation. So that they can be accessed by any time, anyone, and anywhere. All these courses have to be interactive, prepared by the best teachers and are free of cost available to Indians. l

The courses are in 4 quadrants –

(a) video lecture, (b) downloaded/printed enabled material © self-assessment tests (d) for doubt clearing-an online discussion forum.

NAD

National Academic Depository- a 24X7, round the clock online storehouse of all the academic awards such as certificates, degrees, diplomas, mark-sheets etc. that are duly digitized and also lodged by the academic institutions/ universities/boards / or bodies for eligibility assessment. It validates and guarantees their authenticity as well as safe storage. It makes easy access and retrieval of the required academic award.

Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme of Government of India (TEQIP)

launched by MHRD in December 2002. It was aimed to support and upscale ongoing efforts in improving the quality of technical education in India and enhancing the existing capacities of the technical institutions to become more dynamic, quality conscious, demand-driven, forward-looking, effective and responsive. It can bring into the rapid economic and technological developments occurring at both national as well as international levels.

PMMMNMTT

Envisaged to address all issues related to teachers, teacher preparation, teaching, and their professional development comprehensively. The Mission caters current and urgent issues- supply of the qualified teachers, fetching talent into the teaching profession and raising the quality of teaching at schools and colleges level. Also building a strong professional cadre of a quality teacher with performance standards.

National Digital Library Program

Launched under MHRD, with the aim to integrate national and international digital libraries through a one unique web-portal. Under this program, free of cost access to many important books in English and also in other Indian languages is provided for the user to conveniently fetch the required inputs from those books.

RUSA

Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyan. It is the Centrally Sponsored Scheme planned by the Central Government has to implement -the strategic funding, reforms, and improvements in the Higher Education sector at the state level.

Originally published at ugcnetpaper1.com on May 6, 2018.