After having spent a whole year designing fresh affiliation guidelines, Bangalore University is again likely to take a “lenient” stand on colleges that fall short of the requisite score to be eligible for affiliation.
Nearly 50 colleges that have a score of less than 40 per cent are likely to get a nod of approval. In the University Academic Council meeting held this week, it was decided to go easy on these colleges. The reason: The new tool adopted by the Local Inquiry Committees (LICs) was found lacking on several counts. Vice chancellor Prof B Thimme Gowda contended this saying that the decision of the Council was not final and the Syndicate meeting scheduled for March 25 would take a call in this regard.
Tool to be redesigned
He said there were lacunae in the new tool and it would have to be redesigned for the next year. “Since this is the first time, there have been loopholes. It will be tweaked soon and a committee will be appointed for the same,” he said.
However, some members part of the Academic Council meeting complained that the proceedings were “unsatisfactory”. The members had the task of reviewing 25 LIC reports at a stretch, with each committee having assessed more than 20 colleges. In all, as many as 550 colleges were inspected. The meeting stretched between 11 am and 8:30 pm and some members told Deccan Herald that towards the end, they were overcome with fatigue and the assent to colleges were given indiscriminately.
One Academic Council member said: “What do you expect when we sit for hours together reviewing the reports? The work should have been done over at least three days. There was no proper deliberation or discussion.”
According to Gowda, new colleges could not be evaluated based on their results or paper presentations and were favoured approval based on their potential to improve. On the contrary, members criticised that the university officials had sufficient time for deliberations and yet adopted an assessment method that could not be uniformly applied to all colleges.
Three different committees were appointed to evolve the new set of parameters for “objective” assessment of colleges. According to the new framework, the scores given to colleges were broadly categorised into process index, faculty index, infrastructure index and students performance index. These categories have been assigned 20, 30, 30 and 20 percent marks, respectively. A college has to get a collective minimum of 40 per cent score to be eligible for affiliation. These categories comprised evaluation based on maintenance of records, staff quality and strength, sports, extra curricular activities, results, paper presentations, etc.
Different guidelines
Those part of the LICs said they could not assess colleges based on the results as they were yet to be announced at the time of inspections.
Requesting anonymity, a member said different guidelines were required for each type of college. For instance, a separate set of parameters for evening and day colleges, women’s colleges, science, arts and commerce colleges. “The needs of rural colleges are different from those in cities. Also, you do not need a physical instructor in an evening college. It would be inappropriate to rate an evening college based on the absence of a physical instructor here,” the member added.
Further, one of the requirements is for colleges to establish counselling cell, sexual harassment cell and equal opportunity cell. “In the first place, does the university have these cells? What is the function of an equal opportunity cell?” the member asked, pointing out that none of the principals has been informed about the nuances or given time for preparation.
