Telangana to strictly enforce 75% attendance rule in higher education institutions

The Telangana Council of Higher Education will strictly enforce 75% mandatory attendance in all higher education institutions from this academic year. Attendance will be tracked via facial recognition and linked to fee reimbursement and exams. Sports quota and communicative English course introduced.

Hyderabad: The Telangana Council of Higher Education (TGCHE), along with the State Universities, have decided to strictly enforce 75 percent minimum mandatory attendance for students in all higher educational institutions.

This has been decided in a meeting convened by the TGCHE with Vice Chancellors here on Friday.
Speaking to ‘Telangana Today’, TGCHE Chairman Prof. V Balakista Reddy said the 75 percent minimum mandatory attendance was not new but it would be strictly enforced from this academic year. This was being done to improve the academic standards in the higher educational institutions.

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” This decision has been taken in view of the High Court orders and taking the UGC and AICTE guidelines into account. Students will be informed about this rule at the beginning of the academic year and from time-to-time. We want to improve the quality of higher education,” he said.
Further, all universities agreed to implement the facial recognition-based attendance system, which will be linked to the fee reimbursement scheme and examinations as well. Students recording less than the mandatory attendance will not be eligible for fee reimbursement from the State government and they will not be allowed to sit for the exams. The officials also decided to sports quota to the tune of 0.5 percent in PG admissions via the CPGET.

“So far, there is no sports quota in the PG admissions. We have decided to implement it from this academic year and all universities have agreed as well,” said a senior official.

It has also been decided to introduce a communicative English course for undergraduate programmes – BA, BCom and BSc from this academic year. The course has been designed with an aim of developing communication and writing skills. Accordingly, necessary audio and video material has been developed. The course will be offered for four semesters starting from the first year first semester. It will not be offered in the final-year of the course work.

Also, the meeting discussed changes to be brought as per the UGC rules in the GO-21 for taking up assistant professors’ recruitment in the universities. While the government order mandates 10 marks weightage for candidates holding a PhD degree, the UGC guidelines pitch for 30 marks. The Vice Chancellors and other officials wanted amendment to the GO taking the UGC guidelines into account.