Mumbai: Two more government-run colleges in the city – Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Innovation and Research (SIMSREE) and Institute of Forensic Science (IFS) – will leave the University of Mumbai (MU) to join Dr Homi Bhabha State University (HBSU), a cluster university located in south Mumbai.
The state cabinet on Monday gave its approval to make the two institutes constituent colleges of HBSU, which currently comprises three other government colleges – Institute of Science, Elphinstone College, Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics. The move is aimed at bringing various state-run institutes in the city under a single umbrella while facilitating multidisciplinary education and research.
The new additions to HBSU are located at the campuses of its existing institutes; SIMSREE shares its premises with Sydenham College at Churchgate, while IFS is part of the Institute of Science campus near Colaba, which also houses the varsity’s administrative offices. “As these are government-run colleges located in the vicinity, it will help improve their governance,” said an HBSU official.
“In a way, HBSU is the most multidisciplinary university in the state as our colleges offer courses across disciplines. With the addition of SIMSREE and IFS, our spectrum will widen. We are already offering programmes that allow students to take courses across the institutes. The students will now get even more options,” said the official. HBSU has an enrolment of over 5,000 students, which will likely increase by 500 after the two institutes come on board.
The move is part of the state government’s policy of creating smaller universities to ease the burden on its 13 public varsities and effectively implement a flexible curriculum envisaged under the National Education Policy (NEP). Last year, the government issued norms for the creation of ‘cluster’ universities by combining two to five colleges run by a single management in a particular district.
HBSU was carved out of MU as the state’s first cluster university in 2019 under the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a centrally sponsored scheme to strategically fund government-run and aided higher education institutes.
Two more cluster universities – HSNC University in Mumbai and Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil University in Satara – were formed later. Additionally, the Ministry of Education last year approved merging the Sir JJ School of Art and its two sister institutes, which were also affiliated to MU, into a deemed university under the 'de novo' category.
