UGC strategic plan to be expanded to cover ragging, protests

The Unive r s i t y G r a n t s Commission (UGC) will expand its five-year strategic plan to cover student intake, ragging and street protests, UGC Chairman Sampath Amaratunge told the Sunday Times.

Last year, the UGC came up with a strategic plan with a number of objectives to be achieved from 2019 to 2023.

“We are determined to achieve the objectives with more expansions, as advised by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the government. Among our concerns are ragging in universities and student protests on the streets. We are holding discussions with the university authorities on how to handle these issues and include them in our long- term strategic plan,” Prof Amaratunge said.

He said higher education authorities were open to discussion and they had managed to reduce street protests that lead to riot police water cannon attacks.

“We plan to go to universities and solve issues before the students take to the streets. A long-term plan is to be introduced to deal with student demands and ragging,” he said.

According to the strategic plan, universities are to be completely free of ragging and sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) by 2023.

The plan's other objective is creating a conducive and safe learning environment in universities. The five percent academic staff appointed as student counsellors/mentors at present will be increased to 25 percent by 2023.

The plan also envisages a three percent increase in student intake and a two-month time gap between the release of A/L results and university admission of students.

The UGC will also initiate awareness campaigns at universities to promote and enhance the usage of research databases, plagiarism software and e-books.