Revising guidelines for autonomous colleges

Chennai:UGC members and heads of institutions at a consultation meeting held in Chennai on Saturday. Representatives from over 70 autonomous institutions across the State attended a consultation meeting, organised by the University Grants Commission (UGC), here on Saturday. Stella Maris was the host college.The meeting was aimed at revising the guidelines prescribed during the 10th Five Year Plan for autonomous colleges. The UGC constituted a committee to compile feedback given by principles, deans and senior faculty of autonomous institutions, and submit it to the Commission. The UGC would consider these while revising the guidelines for the 11th Five Year Plan period.

Committee member Xavier Alphonse said Tamil Nadu had the highest number of autonomous institutions in the country. Over 100 colleges of the nearly 275 autonomous institutions in the country were in the State.The guidelines would broadly be based on three objectives, namely, removing bottlenecks in the process of realisation of autonomy, to facilitate a quicker process to obtain autonomy and to enhance the status of autonomy to degree awarding status.“In the light of suggestions made here, we will submit a draft with the guidelines to the Commission by August. We are expecting the revised guidelines to be out by this September,” Mr.Alphonse said.The committee, besides requesting for a raise in funding (from Rs.12 lakh to Rs.20 lakh every year), will address inclusiveness in higher education, credit transfer, vertical mobility and lateral entry.

The first consultation meeting was held in Andhra Pradesh and the final meeting in the series would be held in Bhopal soon. The committee comprises UGC’s joint secretary A.K.Dogra and UGC members, Ramamurthy Naidu, Sashi Rai .and Mr.Alphonse.Mr.Alphonse said UGC was considering recognising community colleges as an alternate system of learning for school drop outs and candidates failing in class ten and addressing how they could be mainstreamed later.