Institutional Autonomy in light of NEP-2020: Challenges and Reforms

 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)