Hyderabad: If the Centre has its way, each university in the country will not have more than a hundred colleges affiliated to it.
This decision will have a big impact on Telangana where three universities-Osmania University, Kakatiya University and JNTU-Hyderabad have five to seven times the number decided by the HRD ministry. If we take the case of Osmania University, it has a whopping 740 colleges affiliated to it including engineering, pharmacy, degree, PG, MBA and MCA colleges. Likewise, Kakatiya University has 477 colleges affiliated to it.
The technological varsity-JNTU-Hyderabad is not far behind. It has over 420 colleges linked to it. As part of the National Education Policy-2016, the MHRD is mulling a restructuring of the existing varsities so that each of them will not have more than a hundred colleges under its ambit.
Academic experts said that restructuring universities is okay but creating new varsities on this pretext isn’t. It may be mentioned here that OU caters to Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Hyderabad districts, Kakatiya varsity caters to Warangal, Khammam and Adilabad districts. Hence the number of affiliations is higher.
Palamuru varsity caters to Mahabubnagar, Mahatma Gandhi varsity to Nalgonda, Telan-gana varsity to Nizamabad and Shatavahana University to Karim-nagar. Affiliations are fewer in new varsities. OU and KU can transfer some of the colleges attached to them to these, a retired professor from KU said.
He gave an example of degree colleges. “There are 305 degree colleges affiliated to KU. With semester system coming into effect from 2016, exams have to be held every six months. Varsity administration has to take steps to conduct exams for nearly 2.5 lakh students at a single go. Doing academic audit is difficult for varsity administration if the number is big,” he felt.
Osmania University Teachers Association president Battu Satyanarayana laid emphasis on strengthening the existing varsities that are plagued with problems like lack of faculty, paucity of funds and infrastructure.
plans to introduce global campuses
Indian Institutions will be allowed to set up campuses abroad with the Centre mull-ing new legislation or amendment to existing laws.
As part of internationalisation of higher education, the Union HRD ministry has come up with this proposal. Apart from allowing Indian institutions to go abroad, leading global universities (top-200) will be allowed to open their campuses in India.
Existing laws will be amended so that the foreign varsity can offer its own degree to Indian students studying in India in such a way that these degrees will be valid in the country of origin.
Also norms and regulations to allow foreign faculty to join Indian institutions will be reviewed by the Centre. Genuine concerns and difficulties faced by foreign students / faculty pertaining to visa, registration and extension of stay and tax rules and regulations will be addressed.
IIT Delhi Director Prof. Ramgopal Rao felt that this decision would pave the way for reputed varsities like Stanford to start their campuses in India.
