Which of the following are the objectives of Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha…

Concept — Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) is a centrally sponsored scheme launched in 2013 to fund and reform state higher education. Its objectives all point in one direction: raise quality, strengthen faculty and institutional capacity, and expand provision by upgrading institutions that already exist.

Two ideas follow from that design. Funding under RUSA is tied to quality assurance, with accreditation and conformity to prescribed norms as the framework. And RUSA is an upgradation scheme — it moves an institution up the ladder (an autonomous college becomes a university, a cluster of colleges becomes a cluster university); it carries no provision for moving any institution down.

Application — Test each listed statement against the scheme document.

• Improving the overall quality of state institutions is a stated RUSA objective, with mandatory accreditation as the quality-assurance framework.

• Ensuring adequate availability of quality faculty is a stated RUSA objective, alongside capacity building at all levels of employment.

• Creating new institutions by upgrading existing autonomous colleges is a RUSA component — the guidelines describe creation of universities by way of upgradation of existing autonomous colleges.

• Downgrading universities with poor infrastructure into autonomous colleges appears nowhere in the scheme. RUSA answers weak infrastructure with infrastructure and equipment grants, not with demotion.

Cross-check — The upgradation principle settles the codes quickly: a code that carries the downgrading statement contradicts a scheme whose whole architecture is about moving institutions upward, so it cannot be the intended set. The code built from the quality, faculty and upgradation statements is the one consistent with the guidelines.

Hence the correct code is the one that selects (a), (b) and (c).