India's Best Colleges Might Award Degrees Of Their Own
Now India's top colleges and research centers can award their own degrees to students, without any dependency on bigger universities they are affiliated to. The new move has been planned by Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry and the beneficiaries of this are colleges like Delhi's St. Stephen College and Kolkata's St. Xavier's. According to a senior government official, these colleges will receive limited authority to award degrees on their own.
Research centers and colleges that will be permitted to hand out their own degrees will be selected on the basis of their age and quality of education, which will be judged by their accreditation rating, performance of students and other such parameters. A senior official said that colleges will enjoy the power to award UG degrees while research centers will be provided with the power to award PG degrees.
The above plan was suggested by a panel of education experts to enable more freedom to top notch colleges in the country. If the proposed idea comes into effect, it would grant both colleges and research centers more teeth to conduct their own examinations. However on the contrary, the move would draw comparison to the concept of deemed universities, created to offer more freedom to institutions which includes permission to award degrees.
This is due to the fact that the central review panel last year had found several institutions that were enjoying the status of deemed university but were not worth it. As of now, only universities and deemed to be universities recognized by UGC are permitted to award degrees.
In the current scenario, there are certain states have already been provided adequate autonomy to colleges, in which Mumbai's St. Xavier's College has the power to award UG degrees.
Source: Prachi Srivastava (Shiksha Team)
Date: 25th March, 2011
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