Academic institutions aspiring to be autonomous need to gear up for facing the challenges and instituting reforms required for securing and sustaining institutional autonomy in consonance with NEP-2020
New
National Education Policy (NEP-2020) envisages to transform all colleges into
fully autonomous degree-granting colleges or constituent colleges of a cluster
university. As per clause 10.4 of NEP-2020 “a stage-wise mechanism for granting
graded autonomy to colleges, through a transparent system of graded
accreditation, has been outlined, following which colleges will be encouraged, mentored,
supported, and incentivized to gradually attain the minimum benchmarks required
for each level of accreditation. Over a period of time, it is envisaged that
every college would develop into either an autonomous degree-granting college,
or a constituent college of a university, and in the latter case, it would be
fully a part of the university. With appropriate accreditations, autonomous
degree-granting colleges could evolve into research-intensive or reaching-intensive
universities, if they so aspire”. In this regard a national conference was
organized on the theme “Institutional Autonomy in light of NEP-2020: Challenges
and Reforms” at Govt. Degree College, Baramulla on August 24-25, 2022 wherein
major challenges likely to be confronted and reforms required to be made by the
institutions of higher learning for achieving institutional autonomy were
discussed threadbare by eminent academicians and experts in the field.
Pertinently GDC Baramulla is the third college of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir
that has been granted autonomous status by the government of J&K. Other two
colleges that were granted this status earlier include Islamia College of
Science and Commerce, Srinagar and Govt. College for Women, parade ground,
Jammu.
As
per my own understanding, ten big challenges for achieving and sustaining
institutional autonomy are enumerated as under:
1. Accountability and Transparency
Authority and autonomy is always fraught with a lot of responsibility. Securing autonomy is a lot easier than sustaining it. Financial accountability and transparency is the litmus test for any institution for sustaining its autonomy in the long run since that will govern the credibility of its administrative functioning. When an institution is given full authority to make its own admissions, run its own courses, manage its own finances, examine and evaluate its own students and award degrees to them, it has to display full integrity, accountability and transparency in all these processes. Establishing a fool-proof examination and evaluation system and ensuring its accountability, transparency, confidentiality and integrity shall be one of the biggest challenges before an autonomous academic institution.
2. Timely
completion of programmes
Primary
stakeholders of any educational institution are its students and one thing that
concerns students the most is timely completion of their degrees so that their
precious time is not lost by any means and they do not miss out on any
opportunities for their recruitment on account of any inordinate delays in
their degree completion. Therefore, this will be yet another yardstick on which
the autonomy of an institution will be judged considering the fact that the
entire cycle starting from admission of the students till the award of their
degrees shall be lying within the jurisdiction of the autonomous institution,
for which they need to constitute their own Governing Body, Academic Council,
Board of Studies, IQAC and Examination Cell.
3. Employability
and acceptability of students in job markets
Credibility
and standing of an autonomous institution as well the demand for its courses will
be determined by the employability and acceptability of its pass-outs in the
national and global job markets particularly in light of the fast-changing
dynamics of job markets around the globe in the post-covid era. Therefore,
autonomous institutions need to focus more on job-oriented, skill-enabled,
demand-driven and industrially relevant courses with sufficient degree of
practical orientation, internship and on-job training.
4. Assessment
and accreditation scores and grades
In
the NEP-2020 era maximum thrust is being laid by the regional and central
governments as well as funding agencies upon assessment and accreditation
status of the institution and its programmes. Quantum and continuity of funding
is also being governed by the assessment and accreditation scores and grades of
the institution. Therefore, all academic institutions aspiring to become
autonomous or having already achieved this status need to pool all their
resources, efforts, capabilities and energy towards attaining and retaining
good assessment and accreditation scores and grades. This will add to their
credibility and standing among academic and social circles and help them
attract substantial funding as well as best talent in the field.
5. Community
outreach, consultancy and extension activities
Community
outreach and extension activities are as important as teaching and research
owing to the fact that NEP-2020 expects educational institutions to step out of
their boundaries and extend their services, research outcomes and benefits to
the communities at large and include members of the civil society in their
decision-making process. NEP-2020 emphasizes upon the educational institutions
to make their research need-based, demand-driven, context-specific, locally and
socially relevant besides adopting communities and villages for their outreach
and extension activities.
6. Academic
and scientific impact of research
Soul
of any institution of higher learning comprises of its academic and research
output and their scientific impact that is in turn governed by the quantum of
publication of research papers, books, book chapters and publication of
path-breaking research findings in high impact national and international journals
of repute. Publication metrices and citation indices are important parameters
for assessment and accreditation and therefore need to be taken seriously by
academic institutions aspiring for grant or continuation of autonomy. Academic
impact in turn will be governed by curricular framework adopted by the
institution, its design, upgradation and reforms undertaken on regular basis.
Quality, relevance and validity of curricular content will be of utmost
importance for its overall success.
7. Social
relevance and impact of education and research
Government
and private funding agencies worldwide are seeking returns on their investments
and laying huge emphasis these days on the societal outcomes of research and
their applicability in resolving day-to-day problems being faced by the
mankind. So far researchers have been focusing only upon scientific or academic
impact of the research in terms of number and quality of publications in
scientific journals having high impact factor. However, there is also need to
assess and ensure some kind of social impact of the education and research of
an institution on ground because at the end of the day it is not the impact
factor, h-index or the number of citations received on a publication that
matter; what really matters the most is to what extent research has
significantly impacted and brought a positive change in the human lives and
transformed this world into a better place to live. Therefore, it becomes
imperative for every piece of research irrespective of the field in which it is
undertaken to have a significant societal impact in terms of some kind of
scientific, social, cultural, economic, environmental, ecological, political,
spiritual, technological, legal, behavioural, demographic, ethnic or humanistic
implications on the society at large. Autonomous institutions need to lay
maximum thrust on the societal relevance and impact of their education and
research for making a mark for themselves in the long run.
8. Skill
enhancement, innovations, start-up incubation and entrepreneurship development
For
a long time youth of our country have been suffering from the miseries of
skill-deprivation and lack of innovation in their education. Now, in consonance
with NEP-2020, it is time to accord as much importance to
innovation-incubation, start-up and entrepreneurship development as is given to
teaching-learning and research. Progress of educational institutions is
nowadays being determined by the number of new prototypes produced, start-ups
incubated and innovative products and services developed by them. Many
universities treat a successful start-up at par with a Ph.D. thesis owing to
their utility and financial impact on the entrepreneurs. Therefore, all
autonomous institutions need to establish their own innovation-incubation and
entrepreneurship development centres.
9. Infrastructure
development and institution building
Autonomous
institutions need to continuously work on their infrastructure development and
institution building so that they can continue to offer new programmes with the
passage of time and thereby keep on increasing the demand for their courses
which can in turn help them generate their own revenue on a sustainable basis. Every
institutional head needs to contribute significantly towards institution
building and thereby leave a rich legacy behind so that his name is remembered
in the annals and history of that institution for a long time to come.
10. Financial
resource mobilization and utilization
Last
but not the least smartness of any head of an autonomous or aspiring to be
autonomous institution will be judged by his capabilities of financial resource
mobilization and utilization as per financial codes in vogue. There are a good
number of funding agencies ready to fund innovative ideas for academic
enrichment and research activities. Pre-requisite for funding is the utility,
impact, robustness and novelty of grant proposals submitted by the institution.
Ample funding opportunities are available under schemes like college with
potential for excellence, women empowerment, skill-enhancement, community
enrichment, finding solutions to contemporary problems like climate change,
unemployment, drug abuse, increasing disease burden and decreasing life
expectancy rates. Ultimately financially sound institutions only will emerge
successful in achieving and sustaining their autonomous status.
On the basis of challenges listed above, ten big reforms
required for securing and safeguarding institutional autonomy by any higher
educational institution are summarized as under:
v Revisiting its vision and mission statements in tune with NEP-2020
v Re-examining and rethinking its future goals, objectives and plans of
action
v Redesigning and remodelling its course curriculum in consonance with
various provisions of NEP-2020
v Re-engineering its academic and research infrastructure
v Restructuring and re-orienting its human resource
v Revamping the organizational structure in consonance with NEP-2020
v Reviving and re-energizing its faculty improvement programmes and
student welfare measures and practices
v Refurbishing its student and teacher amenities and other on-campus facilities
v Re-aligning and repositioning its march towards growth, progress and
development
v Redeeming and restoring our glorious past in education
Conclusion
While our academic institutions embark on their
journey of attaining and retaining institutional autonomy, they shall have to
begin with a change in their outlook and instead of being sceptical about this paradigm
shift they must view it optimistically and strongly believe that it might be challenging
but not impossible to achieve. Then they need to work on their Institutional
Development Plans (IDPs) in consonance with clause 19.5 of the NEP-2020.
Through IDPs, higher education institutions need to identify their achievable
targets in terms of curricular reforms, infrastructural development,
pedagogical innovation, augmentation of human resource, administrative reforms,
effective institutional governance, evaluation and examination reforms,
research innovation, skill development, community outreach programmes, student
exchange programmes, stakeholder involvement, partnering with skill hubs,
industry-academia interaction, innovation and start-up incubation, promotion of
open learning and workflow automation. For optimum results a bottom-up approach
is suggested for the preparation of IDPs in consultation with various
departments, centres and schools of a a college. Individual departments can
furnish the requisite information on a prescribed format covering all aspects
of NEP-2020 after convening their departmental committee meetings, that in turn
can be used to consolidate and finalize an IDP for the whole college. Once
strategic IDPs are formulated and submitted by the HEIs to the higher education
department and UGC, it will become easier for them to secure substantial
financial support and execute the same in a time bound manner. Thereafter, by
taking the measures mentioned above, academic institutions can begin their
journey towards getting transformed and elevated as autonomous degree granting
institutions.
(Based on the excerpts from the address delivered by
the author while chairing a technical session during two-day National
Conference on “Institutional Autonomy in light of NEP-2020: Challenges and
Reforms”, organized by Govt. Degree College, Baramulla on August 24-25, 2022)
