36 colleges ready to become ‘Autonomous’ institutes

Aurangabad: A total of 36 colleges within the jurisdiction of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (Bamu) are ready to seek the status of ‘Autonomous’ institute from the next academic year.

It may be noted that there are 486 undergraduate and postgraduate colleges in Aurangabad, Jalna, Beed and Osmanabad districts which fall within the jurisdiction of the university.

Currently, each college has to seek affiliation from the university of the respective region. The university has the power to design syllabi and conducts examinations. After the declaration of the results, it awards a degree to each UG, PG passed candidate.

Only two colleges have obtained autonomy from Bamu so far. The first Government College of Engineering while the second is MIT.

Talking to newsmen on Thursday, vice chancellor Dr Pramod Yeole said that 36 colleges have given their consent for the autonomy. “Before giving autonomy, an expert team of Bamu will visit each college and verify the infrastructure, facilities and teaching staff. On the basis of the panel’s report, the institute will be declared ‘autonomous’

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Autonomy leads to education quality improvement

Some of academicians and experts said that the University Grants Commission (UGC) urged colleges to go for autonomous status as there is stress in New Education Policy (NEP) to give autonomy to all colleges by 2030.

"So, even the State Government and universities encourage colleges for autonomy. According to UGC, the only safe and better way to improve the quality of education is to de-link most of the colleges from the affiliating structure," they said. The academicians asserted that colleges with academic and operative freedom are doing better and have more credibility.

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Objectives of autonomy

Some of the objectives of autonomy are as follows;

--An institute will be able to determine and prescribe its own courses of study and syllabi, and restructure and redesign the courses to suit local needs, making it skill oriented and in consonance with the job requirements.

--Evolve methods of assessment of students' performance, the conduct of examinations and notification of results;

--Use modern tools of educational technology to achieve higher standards and greater creativity.