Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala, UGC chairman, retires after a tenure driven towards implementation of the NEP. Some major reforms he launched include measures to introduce flexibility in college education and faculty appointments, dissolving the UGC-CARE list, and more.
Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala has retired as the chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC). He took the position in February 2022. Throughout his tenure, Mr. Kumar promoted the principles of NEP 2020. His tenure brought in sweeping changes to higher education like the dissolution of the UGC-CARE list; The Draft UGC (Minimum Standards of Instructions in the Award of UG and PG Degrees) norms that sought to promote flexibility in qualification of faculty, and more. Some of these, highly debated.
Mr. Kumar served at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi from 2016 to 2022. Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala was born in Mamidala village in Tipparthi mandal, Nalgonda district, Telangana. He completed his Master’s and Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He subsequently went on to do his post-doctoral research at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Under his tenure, the UGC announced a new set of regulations to streamline the process of recognising and granting equivalence to academic qualifications obtained from foreign institutions. The UGC (Recognition and Grant of Equivalence to Qualifications Obtained from Foreign Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2025, now allow for the recognition of qualifications obtained from offshore campuses of foreign institutions.
Mr. Kumar promoted the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 consistently through his policies and speeches. Speaking at an event about the spirit of the NEP, Mr. Kumar said, “Let the students think freely, without any constraints of disciplinary boundaries. Students should not be conformists; they should challenge the status quo and question everything they study”.
One of the most debated decisions under Mr. Kumar’s tenure was the discontinuation of the UGC-CARE list. It was a list of quality academic journals, first introduced in 2018. The UGC-CARE list has been replaced by a set of suggestive parameters for choosing journals based on eight criteria.
As the chairman of the UGC, Mr. Kumar brought many reforms to UG and PG education. The Draft UGC (Minimum Standards of Instructions in the Award of UG and PG Degrees) Regulations 2024 proposed sweeping changes in admission as well as the structure of programmes.
This brought to the students the liberty to pursue multidisciplinary education. It also brought in multiple entries, recognition of prior learning, besides accelerated and extended degree programs allowing the shortening or lengthening of the UG programmes. Mr. Kumar maintained that these changes were made to ensure they aligned with the evolving academic needs of our time.
These reforms, however, were criticised. Even though the goals of these reforms were clear, there were questions on the availability of resources to implement these sweeping changes.
Hurdles still exist with systemic issues such as insufficient faculty strength, underfunded institutions, and a lack of adequately trained or motivated teachers. It was said that the regulatory framework, such as on class strength requirements, governing affiliated colleges where a majority of the students study, was ill-equipped to support these new rules that may be implemented more easily in autonomous institutions.
A major bone of contention was that his reforms sought to give the Governor wider powers to govern universities through the appointment of Vice-Chancellors. Critics saw it as undermining the role and powers of State governments.
Published – April 07, 2025 09:01 pm IST