The action plan arising from the Academic and Administrative Reforms Committee…

Concept. The UGC's Action Plan for Academic and Administrative Reforms — drawn up by the committee convened by Prof. A. Gnanam — was a roadmap of academic-reform measures that universities and colleges were asked to adopt during the Eleventh Plan period. Its scope was the internal academic architecture of a degree programme: how courses are credited, how the curriculum is kept current, and how teaching time is structured.

Application. The plan's action items were the choice-based credit system (a cafeteria-style credit framework letting students pick courses across disciplines), curriculum development (periodic, time-bound revision of every programme's content), and the regulation of student-faculty contact hours per semester (since a credit is defined in terms of weekly instructional hours, the plan had to fix how many contact hours a semester carries). So the items belonging to the plan are:

• Choice-based credit system

• Curriculum development

• Deciding the number of student-faculty contact hours during a semester

Contrast. Two listed items sit outside this committee's action plan. Vocationalization of higher education and skill-based courses and programmes are job-readiness / employability thrusts that belong to other UGC and policy initiatives, not to the Gnanam committee's academic-administrative reform package. A combination that swaps in either of those, or drops contact-hours, does not match the plan.

Result. The action plan included the choice-based credit system, curriculum development, and deciding student-faculty contact hours per semester.