Quality finger at college autonomy: 'Violation' of exam, admission norms

As more colleges gain the "autonomous" tag, the quality of education has been declining in many of them, particularly some private colleges that allow unethical practices, according to complaints lodged with the University Grants Commission.

Last August, the Chhattisgarh Swami Vivekanand Technical University, Bhilai, accused an affiliated private autonomous engineering college, the Bhilai Institute of Technology (BIT-Durg), of violations of examination, evaluation and salary norms, among others.

Then the Indian Society for Technical Universities (ISTU), an association of all government-run technical universities, lodged a complaint with the UGC in December citing the Chhattisgarh university's findings against BIT-Durg.

It added that violations of exam, evaluation and admission norms had been alleged against many other private autonomous engineering colleges, too.

The autonomous status allows a college to design its own courses and admission policy, and conduct its own exams while the affiliating university grants the degrees. If a government college gains autonomous status and starts self-financing courses, it lightens the financial burden on the government.

The UGC, which has been encouraging the grant of autonomous status to colleges, eased the rules further last year, which implies the increasing number of autonomous colleges (see chart) is likely to rise more sharply now.

Under the new rules, a college running for at least 10 years with simple accreditation from any agency, such as the National Assessment and Accreditation Council or the National Board of Accreditation, is eligible to apply for autonomous status. Previously, colleges needed to have accreditation with an "A" grade.

Also, the affiliating university earlier had a greater say in granting the autonomous status. A joint committee of the state government, affiliating university and the UGC inspected the applicant institution before the status was granted.

But the 2023 regulations dropped the requirement for the inspection and gave the university just 30 days to send its recommendation with reasons, reducing the time for due diligence.

The UGC this week wrote to all universities to speed up the grant of autonomy to colleges, but is yet to address the ISTU's concerns.

The charges against BIT-Durg, which became autonomous in 2020, are based on the findings of a committee formed by the Chhattisgarh university.

The ISTU’s letter to the UGC cited these findings, which say BIT-Durg had failed to furnish records to prove it had followed the norm of having outside experts set 40 per cent of the questions in all its exam papers.

The committee also accused the institute of simply interchanging the examination marks of students who had applied for revaluation of their papers.

The institute is also accused of paying faculty and staff below the All India Council for Technical Education’s norms. The ISTU also said that BIT-Durg’s syllabus needed changes.

"Colleges have failed to stand up to their own as well as University/ UGC Regulations," the ISTU’s letter said.

Emails have been sent to BIT-Durg principal Arun Arora and UGC chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar seeking their comments on the complaints of norm violations. Their responses are awaited.

A senior academic associated with the ISTU said government universities cannot be expected to award degrees to students of autonomous colleges that allow quality to decline and encourage malpractice, because it gives them a bad name.

"If the UGC wants more colleges to become autonomous, the government should grant them deemed university status or they may become private universities," the academic said.