IT Correspondent
New Delhi, Aug. 12:
Universities will be restricted to provide affiliations to 300 colleges under the new National Education Policy (NEP-2020), Union minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘’Nishank’’ stated on Wednesday.
Addressing a virtual session titled ‘Education post COVID-19’, he said that there are many universities with which hundreds of colleges are affiliated. This has to be stopped to impart quality education.
“I recently visited a university and asked the vice-chancellor how many colleges were affiliated to that university, he said 800-degree colleges. Initially I thought I heard him wrong and as such asked him again and he repeated that 800-degree colleges were affiliated to his university. It was a convocation ceremony. I was surprised. Can any VC remember the names of the principals of the 800 degree colleges ? he asked.
“Can he or she keep a tab on the quality and functions of such a huge number of colleges? That is why under the NEP we will work in a phased manner to reduce the number of colleges. One university will not affiliate more than 300 colleges and for that, if we need to increase the number of universities we will do that, Nishank added.
The NEP proposes granting more autonomy to colleges and phasing out affiliation system. The system of affiliation will be carried out in phases over 15 years and a mechanism following stages for granting graded autonomy to colleges, through a transparent system of graded accreditation will be established.
The aim is that over time all colleges will develop into either an autonomous degree-granting college, or a constituent college of a university.”We have 45,000-degree colleges of which only 8,000 are autonomous. Based on their quality in a phased manner we will improve their grading and as they progress we will grant them a graded autonomy,” he said.
There are nearly 993 universities and 39,931 colleges in India. These include 411 universities listed by the University Grant Commission. There are three types of universities: Conventional Universities, Deemed Universities and Institutions of National Importance. There are 10275 stand alone institutions, 298 private universities, 548 General, 142 Technical, 63 Agriculture & Allied, 58 Medical, 23 Law, 13 Sanskrit and 9 language universities. 60.53% Colleges are located in rural area. 11.04% Colleges are exclusively for women. 77.8% Colleges are privately managed, 64.3% Private-unaided and 13.5% Private-aided.
