NEW DELHI: UGC has written to all universities to put in place a "student counselling system" for redressal of problems and challenges faced by students in the backdrop of massive outrage over the suicide by a dalit research scholar in Hyderabad University.

This system should be interactive and target-oriented, involving students, teachers and parents to address common student concerns ranging from anxiety, stress, fear of change and failure to homesickness and other academic worries, UGC secretary Jaspal Singh Sandhu said in a letter to vice-chancellors of all universities.

Referring to UGC guidelines on safety of students on and off campuses, he said that according to them all higher education institutions have to "mandatorily" put in place a broad-based "student counselling system".
These guidelines he said have already been communicated to universities last year, he said.

The UGC letter said that the counselling system should bridge formal as well as communicative gaps between the students and the institution at large.