328 colleges applied for autonomy, UGC cleared 196 proposals: Education Ministry

NEW DELHI: University Grants Commission (UGC) received 328 applications from various colleges for conferment of autonomous status from April 2023 to January 2024. Of these, 196 proposals were considered and approved by the UGC, Subhas Sarkar, the minister of state for education, told the Lok Sabha during the parliament budget session 2024.

Sarkar shared the data in response to an unstarred question raised by the members of parliament (MP) Pritam Gopinathrao Munde, Rahul Ramesh Shewale, Chandra Sekhar Sahu and VK Sreekandan.

Apart from fresh proposals, the commission had also received 83 applications for extension of autonomous status to colleges. Out of the 83, the applications of 71 colleges have been considered and approved by the UGC.

New UGC rules for autonomy

The commission notified new rules under UGC (Conferment of Autonomous Status upon Colleges and Measures for Maintenance of Standards in Autonomous Colleges) Regulations, 2023 in April last year. Following which the role of the parent university was limited to examining the applications for the autonomous status on the UGC portal within a period of 30 days. If the university does not respond within this period, it will be presumed that the university has no objection.

The regulations allowed the autonomous colleges to frame their own syllabi and admission policies, revise the courses and launch new programmes

The guidelines replaced an older set of rules issued in 2018 to align with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Under the 2018 regulations, colleges were required to submit a proposal to the parent university, which had to forward it to the commission within 30 days of receipt.

After finding that universities were not responding to the applications on the portal, the UGC, on January 10, asked universities to implement the regulations.

Which colleges can get autonomy?

The grant of autonomy will be based on the accreditation and assessment scores of the institutions.

Under the new rules, autonomous status will be granted initially for a period of ten years on the condition that the institution is accredited either by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) with a minimum ‘A’ Grade with a score of 3.01 and above or by National Board of Accreditation (NBA) for at least three programmes with a minimum score of 675 individually.

Importantly the accreditation status must be valid for at least one year at the time of application submission. The UGC recently also proposed making NAAC accreditation and ranking by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) compulsory for receiving grants.