MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 72 of 100

Correct — option (2), the UGC. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar took charge as Chairman of the University Grants Commission on 4 February 2022, immediately after completing his term as Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, which he had held from 28 January 2016 to 3 February 2022. He is an electrical engineer by training, with a master's degree and a doctorate from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and postdoctoral work at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and his research field is nanoelectronic and power semiconductor devices; he came to the UGC from a professorship at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The body he was appointed to lead is worth knowing properly, because it is examined in its own right. The University Grants Commission was set up on 28 December 1953 and given statutory status by the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, so it is a statutory body created by an Act of Parliament rather than a constitutional one. Its statutory charge is the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education, and in practice it discharges that charge in two ways — by disbursing grants to universities and colleges, which is where its name comes from, and by framing regulations on such matters as the minimum qualifications for the appointment of teachers, the duration and structure of degrees, and the recognition of universities. Its headquarters are at New Delhi and it maintains regional centres at Pune, Bhopal, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Bengaluru. The chairmanship also carries a live policy question that examiners are fond of: a proposal announced in June 2018 to dissolve the UGC and replace it with a Higher Education Commission of India met considerable opposition and has not been carried through, so the UGC remains the regulator. The other three options name bodies with quite different functions and quite different heads, and none of them has a Chairperson drawn from a university vice-chancellorship in the way this appointment was. The answer to be marked is option (2).

• (1)NCERT — The National Council of Educational Research and Training is not headed by a Chairperson at all, which is the quickest way to eliminate this option. NCERT was established on 27 July 1961 and began formal operation on 1 September 1961; it is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Education with its campus on Sri Aurobindo Marg in New Delhi, and its executive head is its Director, the office of President being held ex officio by the Union Minister of Education. Its work is with school education rather than higher education: it designs curricula, publishes the textbooks for classes one to twelve that the Central Board of Secondary Education prescribes, conducts educational research, trains teachers through its Regional Institutes of Education, administers the National Talent Search Scheme and runs the ePathshala platform. The distinction between the school-level body and the university-level regulator is the one this option tests, and it is a distinction MPSC returns to, because a candidate who has filed both under education without noticing what each actually does will find them interchangeable.
• (3)UPSC — The Union Public Service Commission is a constitutional body established under Article 315 of the Constitution, and its Chairman and members are appointed by the President of India, holding office for six years or until the age of sixty-five, whichever is earlier. Its function is recruitment: it conducts the examinations for appointment to the all-India services and the central services, advises on promotions and transfers between services, and on disciplinary matters affecting civil servants, and it submits an annual report on its work to the President, which is laid before each House of Parliament together with a memorandum on any case where its advice was not accepted. Nothing in that mandate touches the regulation of universities. The option is placed here because the initials of the three bodies look similar in a list and because a candidate reading quickly may pick the acronym he knows best rather than the one that fits the sentence. Note also that a Vice-Chancellor moving to head a body would not, in the ordinary course, move to a recruitment commission.
• (4)ISRO — The Indian Space Research Organisation was founded on 15 August 1969, has its headquarters at Bengaluru, and works under the Department of Space, which is held by the Prime Minister; its executive head carries the title of Chairman, so unlike the NCERT option this one at least matches the word used in the stem. What it does not match is anything else. ISRO's business is space research, launch vehicles, satellites and planetary missions, and its Chairman is drawn from within the space establishment, from the ranks of scientists and engineers who have led its centres and programmes, not from a university vice-chancellorship. The option works as a distractor purely on the strength of the title Chairman and on the fact that Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar is an engineer and a scientist by background, which makes a scientific body sound plausible. The corrective is to read the sentence as a whole — a former Vice-Chancellor moving to chair a body is a move within the higher education system, and the body that regulates higher education is the University Grants Commission.

The regulation of education in India is divided among several bodies whose jurisdictions a candidate should be able to state without hesitation. The University Grants Commission, set up on 28 December 1953 and made statutory by the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, is charged with the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education; it disburses grants to universities and colleges, recognises universities and frames regulations on academic matters, and it is headquartered at New Delhi with regional centres at Pune, Bhopal, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Bengaluru. The National Council of Educational Research and Training, established in 1961 as an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Education, works at the school level: curriculum design, textbooks, educational research, teacher training through the Regional Institutes of Education, and the National Talent Search Scheme; it is headed by a Director, with the Union Minister of Education as its President. Professional education has its own regulators — the All India Council for Technical Education, the National Medical Commission, the Bar Council of India and the Council of Architecture among them. Above all of these sits the policy framework of the National Education Policy of 2020, which proposed a substantial restructuring of the regulatory architecture, and the proposal announced in June 2018 to replace the UGC with a Higher Education Commission of India, which met opposition and has not been enacted. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar became Chairman of the UGC on 4 February 2022 after six years as Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and his tenure has been associated with the rollout of the Common University Entrance Test for undergraduate admission to central universities from the 2022-23 session.

Appointments are among the most predictable items in the current affairs section of any state commission paper, and they are also among the cheapest to prepare, because the material is a list rather than an argument. MPSC asks them in one of two directions: name the person appointed to a stated office, or name the office to which a stated person was appointed, as here. Either way the answer depends on a single association held correctly, and the distractors are chosen to be bodies a candidate might loosely associate with the same field — here three other national bodies, two of them in education and one in science. The efficient preparation is a running list, kept from about eighteen months before the examination, with four columns: the person, the office, the body and the month of appointment. To that list it is worth adding, for each body named, the two or three facts that could themselves be asked — whether it is constitutional, statutory or an executive creation; the year it was set up; where it is headquartered; and who appoints its head. Questions of the second kind are asked at least as often as questions about the appointment itself, and preparing them together costs almost nothing extra. This particular question rewards that habit, because a candidate who could not recall the appointment could still eliminate the NCERT option on the ground that its head is a Director rather than a Chairperson.

• Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar became Chairman of the University Grants Commission on 4 February 2022, having been Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University from 28 January 2016 to 3 February 2022.
• The UGC was set up on 28 December 1953 and given statutory status by the University Grants Commission Act, 1956; it is a statutory body, not a constitutional one, headquartered at New Delhi with regional centres at Pune, Bhopal, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Bengaluru.
• The UGC's statutory charge is the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education; it disburses grants to universities and colleges and recognises universities.
• The NCERT, established in 1961, is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Education headed by a Director, with the Union Minister of Education as its President; it works on school curricula, textbooks, teacher training and educational research, not on university regulation.
• The Union Public Service Commission is a constitutional body under Article 315 whose Chairman and members are appointed by the President, while the Indian Space Research Organisation, founded on 15 August 1969 with headquarters at Bengaluru, works under the Department of Space.

• Confusing the school-level body with the university-level regulator; NCERT designs curricula and publishes textbooks for classes one to twelve, while the UGC regulates university education
• Assuming every national body is headed by a Chairperson; NCERT is headed by a Director, which alone eliminates that option in a question phrased as this one is
• Choosing the most familiar acronym in a list of similar-looking ones rather than the body whose function fits the sentence
• Learning an appointment without learning the body; questions about the nature, year and headquarters of the body are asked as often as questions about who heads it

Appointments and institutions together form one of the largest blocks of the current affairs section in MPSC papers, and they are asked in four shapes: who was appointed to a named office; to which office was a named person appointed, as here; what is the nature of a named body, whether constitutional, statutory or executive; and when and where was it established. The four shapes are answerable from a single prepared list, and the list is worth building continuously through the year rather than assembled in the last month, because appointments made early in the cycle are as examinable as recent ones — this paper was written in August 2022 and asked about an appointment made the previous February. Two refinements pay for themselves. First, record the month, because a question may turn on which of two successive holders was in office at a stated time. Second, record for each body the appointing authority and the term, since those attributes generate their own questions and are frequently the fastest route to eliminating a distractor.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The University Grants Commission is best described as which kind of body ?

  • (a)A constitutional body established under Article 315
  • (b)A statutory body established by the University Grants Commission Act, 1956
  • (c)An autonomous society registered under the Societies Registration Act
  • (d)A department of the Ministry of Education

  Answer(b) A statutory body established by the University Grants Commission Act, 1956. The Commission was first set up on 28 December 1953 and was given statutory status three years later by an Act of Parliament, which charges it with the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education. Article 315 establishes the Union and State Public Service Commissions, which are constitutional bodies, and the UGC is neither a registered society nor a department of a ministry.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following bodies is headed by a Director rather than by a Chairperson ?

  • (a)University Grants Commission
  • (b)National Council of Educational Research and Training
  • (c)Union Public Service Commission
  • (d)Indian Space Research Organisation

  Answer(b) National Council of Educational Research and Training. NCERT is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Education whose executive head is its Director, the office of President being held ex officio by the Union Minister of Education. The University Grants Commission and the Union Public Service Commission are each headed by a Chairman, and the head of the Indian Space Research Organisation also carries the title of Chairman.