Autonomy: PU gets category II status

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 20

The Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) declared 60 institutions as autonomous under different categories with Panjab University (PU) getting in category II while Kurukshetra University (KU) and Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU) getting category I status.

Punjabi University, Patiala, Rajiv Gandhi University of Law, Patiala, Guru Jambeshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar, are also in category II.

According to the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the University Grants Commission says that these institutions have maintained high academic standards. The list was announced by Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar at a media briefing in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Javadekar said the government was striving to introduce a liberalised regime in the education sector and emphasis was on linking autonomy with quality.

He said the 60 higher educational institutions which had been granted autonomy includes 52 universities — five Central universities, 21 state universities, 24 deemed universities, and two private universities.

These universities will remain within the ambit of the UGC but will have the freedom to start new courses, off campus centres, skill development courses, research parks and any other new academic programmes. They will also have the freedom to hire foreign faculty, enroll foreign students, give incentive-based emoluments to the faculty, enter into academic collaborations and run open distance learning programmes.

There will be a graded autonomy and the KU and the GNDU will have more freedom than the PU.

The PU has to take permission of the UGC to start distance education courses unlike the category I university.

In case there is any external review required to be done by the UGC under any statute or executive orders, then in case of a category I institution, it would be sufficient that the institution sends a report to the commission in a prescribed review format. Similarly, for a category II institution, the review can be done by the institution itself through external peer review mechanism wherein the peer team members will be chosen by the institution themselves from representatives of the category I institutions, and the review report will be sent to the UGC after completion of the review. The NAAC score has been counted to grade the universities.