The senate of Panjab University(PU) on Saturday approved the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 for implementation from the current academic year.
PU vice chancellor Prof Renu Vig on Saturday confirmed, “The NEP-2020 will come into effect in PU from the current academic session of 2023-24. For all PU-affiliated collected, the NEP will come into effect from the next academic session 2024-25.”
Earlier, before the senate meeting began in Chandigarh on Saturday, dozens of members of Chandigarh Aided Colleges Teachers Association had staged a protest outside the meeting venue to demand the NEP implementation in PU-affiliated colleges from next year only. The protesters said most affiliated colleges were not prepared to implement NEP yet and needed at least one more year for doing the same.
Later, members of the association also submitted a memorandum to the vice chancellor Vig highlighting their demands. There are a total of 188 government and private colleges affiliated with Panjab University, of which 18 are in Chandigarh.
On Saturday, the senate also approved a revised fee structure, allowing a 5 per cent increase in the fee of traditional courses, and a 7.5 per cent increase in fee of self-financed courses from the current academic session.
Traditional courses are defined as ones taught in the university for a long time, while self-financed courses are those that include subjects like engineering, chemical engineering, law etc.
PU registrar, Yajvender Pal Verma, told The Sunday Express, “In any case, the fee of traditional courses will not go by more than Rs 500. Similarly, for self-financed courses, the fee will not go by more than Rs 7,500. The fee structure was revised keeping in view many aspects.
The PU’s fee structure is still very low when compared to its contemporary universities. The increase is for the betterment of students and university.” Interestingly, most of the senate members had opposed the fee increase stating that the poor students will not able to afford the same.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, the senate members also rejected development charges of Rs 10,000 that had been proposed to be charged from students of three departments — law, pharmaceutical and engineering, and technology. The development charges were proposed by the head of these departments.
Apart from this, the other agendas that were approved during Saturday’s meeting were adoption of National Academic Depository (NAD)-Digilocker, in totality along with Degree Templates of UG and PG courses, implementation of Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) under Digilocker framework as per communications received from UGC, recommendations of the committee to resolve the issue of different degree templates available on NAD-Digilocker not matching with degree templates of Panjab University.
The Senate also approved the minutes of the committee meeting to look into the issue regarding release of enhanced salary in pursuance of CAS promotions under 4th Amendment of UGC Regulation 2010.
The senate also approved the minutes of the Student Aid Fund Administrative Committee with regard to the applications of eligible students of teaching departments/VVBIS & IS, Hoshiarpur and USOL. The senate approved the recommendation of the committee that the Panjab University PhD guidelines formulated in accordance with UGC Minimum Standards and Procedure for award of PhD degree Regulations 2022. The introduction of M.Voc. (Fashion Technology and Apparel Design, in a semester system) from the academic session 2021-22 was also approved.
The senate also approved the revised guidelines for enhancement of honorarium of guest faculty.
