Standardisation of Higher Education

A standardised framework of all qualifications, based on standards or outcomes to facilitate higher educational institutions to offer programmes in a flexible and modular manner,was discussed in the 60thCentral Advisory Board of Education (CABE) meeting. It was decided that the issue of higher educational framework be further discussed in the next CABE meeting. The objective of the framework is topermit students to seek certification and recognition of a module and thus be able to seamlessly move and progress vertically and horizontally across higher educational institutions.For vocational education, Ministry of Human Resource Development and All India Council for Technical Education havealready issued a framework, namely National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF). Details of the NVEQF are available at http://www.aicte-india.org/ downloads/NVEQF_Order.PDF.

Teaching and learning processes in our country are comparable with any other country in the world, though institutions in Europe and USA are more closely associated with industry through research and development. Certain institutions or agencies publish lists of universities or educational institutions ranked globally according to their own criteria. These different international ranking systems use different values, indices and parameters to rank higher educational institutions. These criteria are neither universally accepted nor recognised and are therefore open to criticism about the subjective processes of their evaluation. Nonetheless, we strive for excellence and for due recognition.

The objective of such a standard framework is not to compete with other countries, but to facilitate an unequivocal description of higher education qualification at the national level with the aim that the higher education system of the country is internationally understood and all levels of higher education relate to each other in a systematic and coherent way.