The purpose of the recent initiative of the UGC to organize a series of national level seminars through its regional offices is to

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Autonomous Colleges and Restructuring the Affiliation System

T
                                                       he purpose of the
                                                       recent initiative of
                                                   the UGC to organize
                                                   a series of national
                                                   level            seminars
                                                 through its regional
                                                   offices   is to gather
                                                   inputs      from     the
      academics from the collegiate education system
      for the effective   implementation of the various
     schemes intended   for enhancing the quality and
     relevance of the large number of colleges and
     their programmes. In the first of this series we
     have taken up the issue of autonomous colleges,
     accountability, accreditation and promotion of
     excellence in    colleges.    This    was   held    at
   Hyderabad   under     the auspices   of       the
     Southern     regional     office     of    the   UGC with
     involvement   of     experts,   principals,    senior
     teachers    and    higher    education government
     officials   from   all   parts   of   the   country. The
     conference   reiterated the necessity of granting
   autonomy to   more   colleges   with   a view to
     promoting       independent    innovations     and
     accountability    at   all   levels    of    functioning.
    Enhancing the autonomy grant, identifying about
    150   colleges    as   institutions    of    excellence,
    supporting     them   financially   in a much more
     focused way during the 10th plan and   linking
    developmental   assistance towards   quality and
     excellence    with    autonomy,    institutionalized
    accountability    and    accreditation   are        the
    strategies    adopted    by   the   Commission   for
    achieving this target.
    Most of the autonomous colleges have made use
    of   the    academic    freedom in an innovative
    manner   to     achieve   better     standards    in
    teaching,    research, consultancy and extension.
    Several     learner- oriented      approaches      in
    teaching - learning      have   been successfully
    experimented and    implemented   by a large
    number      of    private       and       government
    autonomous    colleges.       The      assessment
     and accreditation of individual colleges by the

National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and the recent analysis of the accreditation reports of about 100 colleges in the state of Tamil Nadu by an independent expert committee clearly indicate that the autonomous colleges sustain quality performance in all areas. Along with their better capability, the autonomy raises them to a higher level of efficiency in operations. The criticism from some corners that college autonomy may lead to deterioration of quality and standards has been proved to be unfounded in the light of the achievements of the vast majority of the autonomous colleges. College autonomy is a challenge to the teacher. It is a teacher-empowering, learner-centric system. Seen in combination with accountability by way of quality assurance and accreditation, college autonomy is the most desired thing in the complex collegiate education system in the country. The premier institutions like IITs, IIMs and several deemed universities are totally autonomous systems with 100-200 teachers and 1500-2500 students. The teachers who teach in the class room in these institutions are directly responsible and accountable for the entire process of curriculum design, policy making, admission, teaching, evaluation, placement, extension and overall administration. If such a system is possible in institutions of those kind with UG, PG and research, why not colleges with about the same number of students and teachers in the conventional streams of Arts, Science, Humanities and Commerce also practise these autonomous procedures? The governance structures existing in the large
affiliating universities in the country are essentially the same as those several decades ago when these universities were having just a few thousand students and a few hundred teachers. Now in the affiliation system we deal with lakhs of students, hundreds of affiliated colleges and tens of thousands of teachers. A decentralized

UGC News. October,2003 3

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