No fee hike due to autonomy: Minister

NEW DELHI: Human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday held a meeting with Delhi University vice-chancellor, representatives from St Stephen’s and Hindu colleges and informed them that there will be no fee hike in central universities due to some affiliated institutions attaining autonomy.

“Today, I had invited institutes from Delhi University to discuss all issues. We are not imposing autonomy on anyone. There are some institutes who want autonomous status and there are some which don’t,” he said.

On March 20, Javadekar had announced to grant autonomy to 60 educational institutions, including 52 universities and eight colleges, across the country. According to the UGC Guidelines for Autonomous Colleges - 2017, a college that comes under the scheme can determine and prescribe its own courses, restructure and redesign its syllabus, and become skill-oriented in consonance with job requirements.

Such an “autonomous col- lege” is also empowered to prescribe admission rules i n accordance with prevalent reservation policies, evolve methods to assess students’ performance; conduct examinations; and launch self-financing courses, among other actions.

The meeting was attended by principals, representatives from the governing bodies and alumni of the two colleges.

“There will be no fee hike in central universities due to autonomous status being granted to their (affiliated) institutes,” Javadekar said.

Hindu college’s officiating principal Anju Srivastava said the college representatives raised concerns being expressed by students and teachers related to the impact of autonomy.

“There has been a discussion about the impact of autonomy on fees and the service conditions of teachers who will be hired for the new self-financing courses,” Srivastava said.

She said that the minister took note of their concerns.

Meanwhile, members of the executive council of Delhi University has written to the minister opposing the move to grant autonomy to DU colleges.