Highlights of 2022’s Education News: This article contains news on 2022’s education.
New Delhi: This year’s highlights in the education sector included the introduction of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET), which had a rocky start, the postponement of the academic year, reforms to higher education that included twin degree programmes with foreign universities, and the switch to four-year UG degrees.
As part of its “syllabus rationalisation” effort, the NCERT removed information about the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Emergency, the Cold War, the Naxalite movement, and the Mughal courts from its class 12 textbooks. This was in contrast to the CBSE and CISCE board exams returning to the format of one exam in a year rather than split terms.
The Non-Aligned Movement, the expansion of Islamic empires into Afro-Asian lands, and the Industrial Revolution were also removed from the History and Political Science curricula for Classes 11 and 12 by the CBSE.
Similarly, from a chapter on “Food Security,” the topic “effect of globalisation on agriculture” was removed from the Class 10 syllabus. This year, translated passages from two Urdu poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the part titled “Religion, Communalism and Politics – Communalism, Secular State” were also disallowed. Over 40,000 seats in the publicly funded schools were made available as a result of the government’s decision to eliminate many discretionary quotas, including the one for MPs seeking admission.
In March, the University Grants Commission (UGC) declared that undergraduate admissions in the nation’s key universities will no longer be based on Class 12 marks but rather through the CUET. The first iteration of CUET-UG, which became the second-largest admission exam in the nation, was hampered by a number of errors that led to exam cancellations and left the applicants anxious and under pressure. Even though many students received cancellation information the night before the exam, several of them were turned away from testing centres.
According to UGC Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar, some centres cancelled the exam due to “sabotage” allegations. In addition, he insisted that the commission’s suggestion to eventually combine the engineering entrance exam JEE and the medical entrance exam NEET with CUET was a lesson to be learned rather than a setback.
The start of the academic session was postponed from July to November as a result of the CUET-challenging UG’s debut, which also caused delays in the admissions procedure at some universities. This year, after being shut down for nearly two years due to the Covid epidemic, classes at schools and universities resumed.
The government also cracked down hard on the uncontrolled Edtech industry and declared that it is developing a policy to control the edtech platforms, which have significantly impacted the academic world since the pandemic. No “franchise” agreement is permitted under the rules, according to the UGC and technical education regulator AICTE, who warned their recognised universities and institutions against delivering courses in distant learning and online mode in partnership with Ed-tech companies.
The UGC opened the door for higher education institutions in India and abroad to provide joint or dual degrees and twinning programmes. The government also made the historic decision to let students to enrol in two full-time, same-level degree programmes in physical mode at the same university or from other universities at the same time.
The UGC later issued guidelines specifying that the honours programmes must be four-year degrees, and the institutions started their transition to the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP). Later, the committee made it clear that the three-year undergraduate programmes would continue until the four-year programme was fully implemented and that under the new scheme, graduates would be able to enrol right away in Ph.D. programmes.
Throughout the year, universities and other institutions of higher learning in the nation were also permitted to add up to 25% more seats to their undergraduate and graduate programmes for international students. Additionally, the government approved the appointment of eminent specialists as faculty members in universities under the “Professors of Practice (PoP) in Universities and Colleges” category, for which formal academic qualification and publication criteria will not be obligatory.
Experts from a variety of sectors, including engineering, science, journalism, literature, entrepreneurship, social sciences, fine arts, civil services, and the armed forces, would be able to be hired under the category, per the new rules announced by UGC. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) offshore campus formalisation process was started by the government, which appointed a 17-member committee that provided important suggestions.
IIT faculty members may be sent on deputations abroad, and the offshore campuses of IITs may be referred to as the “India International Institute of Technology.” The panel had advised that the percentage of Indian students in those institutes be less than 20%, even though IITs abroad may be free to choose their student numbers.
The Middle-East and South Asian nations have been asking several IITs to set up their campuses. IIT Madras is looking into opportunities in Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Tanzania, while IIT Delhi is considering opening a campus in the United Arab Emirates.