ACADEMIC FREEDOM - TOI article

City college to allow mixing of streams

Hemali Chhapia I TNN

Mumbai: Never would have former Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chairman K Kasturirangan imagined that he could dabble in a little bit of economics along with physics. But thousands who will follow him into Ruia College in the coming years are likely to have the chance to do so. The college is planning to launch a credit-based curriculum after it gets autonomy.
The coming academic year could see three city institutions receive the autonomous tag—Ruia College, St Xavier’s College and Sardar Patel College of Engineering. While the last two have submitted proposals to the University of Mumbai seeking academic freedom, Ruia is busy revising its proposal.
The Matunga-based institution, which had applied for autonomy to the university for its postgraduate courses around three years ago, recently took back its application for a revision. The college plans to submit a fresh application for full academic autonomy—for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses—by the coming month.
Principal Suhas Pednekar said they were “reworking the application seeking autonomy so that the college has the freedom to introduce credit-based courses, as also to review and revise the syllabi every year’’. Started in 1937, Ruia has for long been one of the best institutions for collegiate science in the city. Former students speak of spending long hours in the institution’s postgraduate study and research centre, which has over 1.5 lakh books and journals.
Set up by the S P Mandali, Ruia was among the first institutions to start a Marathi unit to help students cope with English teaching and learning after their Marathi-medium schooling. Moreover, keeping with the times, the institution has changed its facade to a more modern-looking building with wi-fi enabled halls too.
With academic autonomy, said Pednekar, his institution is looking at working with other universities—domestic and international—to redesign courses and review teaching methods and assessment patterns. “Autonomy will give a lot of flexibility in designing syllabi and conducting examinations. We want to introduce a credit-based system to enable students to mix courses in arts and science as also to replace the single-exam system with continuous assessment,’’ added Pednekar.
Sardar Patel College of Engineering, set up by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1962, and St Xavier’s College have also applied for autonomy. University vice-chancellor Vijay Khole said, “All three
proposals are likely to be placed before the next academic council for approval of academic autonomy.’’
Autonomy will give these institutions the freedom to design their own curricula, hold exams, work with experts from other universities, redesign their assessment patterns and bring about several other academic changes.
On the other hand, according to the state’s rules on autonomy, every autonomous college will be governed by an 11-member board, of which merely five will come from the college and the rest will be representatives of the state government and university and other experts.