April 03, 2022

India: University Grants Commission to Soon Launch Schemes to Boost Research at Indian Varsities

M Moving forward in the field of research and development, India’s higher education sector regulator University Grants Commission (UGC) recently announced that it will soon launch various schemes to boost research at Indian universities. From women scholars to skilled faculty members, these schemes are expected to encourage scholars in their field of research.

M. Jagadesh Kumar, the Former Vice Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Current Chairman of University Grants Commission (UGC), said, "In addition to the teaching learning processes, there is a greater need to strengthen the research ecosystem in universities and colleges. We know we have some outstanding institutes such as IITs and some of the central universities, which sit on the top of the pyramid. But at the bottom of the pyramid, that is where millions of students and lakhs of teachers are, we need to strengthen.” There’s already high anticipation for these schemes, one of which is the single girl child fellowship, under which, a female research scholar from a single girl child family can get fellowships under this category.

…these post-doctoral research fellowships will be introduced in the universities across the country…

Another interesting scheme on the horizon is the one for the mid-career faculty members. "They have to be below 50 years and we will fund them to do original research. And then you also have a lot of faculty members who might have retired but they're still very active. So we are going to introduce a research scheme to fund such superannuated faculty also, so that they can work for some more time in the universities, focus on research, focus on mentoring the young faculty," said Kumar. Along with seed funding to the newly recruited faculty members, these post-doctoral research fellowships will be introduced in the universities across the country.

The problem of not enough patents being filed for these researches was also addressed. "If you just do the research and publish in journals, it's not going to have much impact. And we need to convert that research into some kind of prototype and the end product so that it can meet the challenges of this society. And that's the reason why recently we have come up with the guidelines for all the universities to set up research and development cells. You will be surprised to know that many universities do not have the R&D cells in their campuses," said Kumar. These R&D cells will help provide information to the faculty members on sponsored research funding within India and abroad.

Posted in News and tagged News, India, UGC, Higher Education, Research
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