Pune: The Maharashtra government has constituted a task force to monitor the national institute ranking framework (NIRF) performance of non-agriculture universities in the State.
Last month, at a meeting with higher authorities in the State government, the Governor of Maharashtra and Chancellor of State universities, C Vidyasagar Rao, had expressed disappointment over the poor performance of state universities in NIRF. He had demanded that universities should constitute a task force to conduct an academic audit.
On Tuesday, the State government issued guidelines for term and conditions and functions of the formed task force. This committee or task force will be active for two years and meet at least once in three months. The primary objective of the task force will be to offer guidance for better performance of the universities in NIRF and international rankings.
These forces will perform activities such as SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the universities and identify the potential for enhancement of performance in the NIRF rankings. It will analyse data, information, plans, etc, received from the universities and guide them in improving their strategies and implementation.
It will provide an action plan for time-bound achievement of target-based performance by the universities in various ranking exercises and guide the universities for optimum utilisation of their resources and also promote inter-university cooperation wherever possible.
The task force will have the powers to call for required information from the universities and various departments of the State government and also invite them to participatory discussions.
