Cluster varsities will give colleges academic freedom

Yogita.Rao@timesgroup.com

Mumbai:

Three groups of city colleges are coming together to form three universities soon. The first proposal considered for the RUSA scheme was the one of the state colleges, with Government Law College and without Sydenham in 2015.

A statement issued by higher and technical education minister Vinod Tawde said, “To increase the academic quality of higher education, the state has decided to send three proposals to RUSA. It will give students more options in the rightful implementation of choice-based credit system. RUSA will facilitate the setting up of these universities.”

The decision was taken at a meeting with representatives from these colleges and their managements. Tawde clarified that existing state funding to these colleges will not be impacted. The state will have to make a legislation for cluster universities to impose some minimum norms such as NAAC accreditation, resourceful research centres and quality checks, which could take time, said an official.

RUSA’s state project director, Meeta Rajiv Lochan, said students from a commerce college in the cluster can choose to do a minor in chemistry from the other constituent college offering science. “Several interdisciplinary options can be explored. They can share costs and resources, create curriculum, courses etc. It will also give them autonomy to build international linkages. If they enhance brand value, in future, there could be scope for more colleges to get affiliated to the newer universities,” she said.

A government official said the current batch of graduating students from Mumbai University did not learn GST as part of its curriculum as the syllabus was not updated. “Cluster university will allow academic freedom to colleges to develop skill-based curriculum from time to time and allow horizontal mobility of students to choose courses. It will not be the same as the freedom granted to autonomous colleges, as cluster universities will have independent academic bodies of their own, with no representatives from the parent university,” said the official.

Three to five existing colleges with adequate academic, physical and technical infrastructure can come together to form a cluster university, and the participating colleges eventually become constituent colleges of the newly-created university. Since such universities will have multiple campuses, RUSA recommends the constituent colleges to be within a radius of 15-20km to allow sharing of resources. One of the colleges will be the lead college, which will host the vice-chancellor, among other responsibilities.

The Centre had initially floated a plan to start 35 cluster universities across India. The initial scheme was to grant Rs 55 crore to each of the cluster universities to facilitate the process. Jammu and Kashmir already has a cluster university in Srinagar.

 

Source : https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/#