Indore: The much-awaited new education policy of union government is set to change the existing set-up of higher education in the country. There won’t be any affiliating university or affiliated colleges. Rather, all the colleges will be developed into degree-granting institutions but the right to offer post-graduate programmes will be withdrawn from them.
“As per the draft new education policy, all higher education institutions (HEIs) would evolve into one of the three types of institutions, which we will refer to as Types 1, 2, and 3: research universities, teaching university and colleges,” said Prof Sanjeev Tokekar, director of Institute of Engineering and Technology at DAVV.
All affiliating universities will become Type 1 or 2 institutions with one or more campuses. Universities will have no affiliated colleges. All (currently) affiliated colleges will be developed into autonomous degree granting colleges (Type 3) by 2032, or merge completely with the university that they are affiliated to, or become a university (Type 1 or 2).
To enable this transition, adequate support including mentoring will be provided by Type 1 or 2 HEIs or other mentor institutions. Special budget will be allocated to mentor institutions for this purpose. Adequate time will be provided for this transition, which may extend up to 12 years. Thus, there will be no affiliating universities or affiliated colleges after 2032.
The facilities and resources of colleges that do not develop into Type 3 HEIs by 2032 will be optimally utilised as adult education centres, public libraries, vocational education facilities etc.
Type 1: Research universities
These will focus on research and teaching: They will work on cutting-edge research for new knowledge creation while offering the highest quality teaching across undergraduate, masters, PhD, professional, and vocational programmes. These institutions will be encouraged to introduce undergraduate programmes as well. By 2032, around 100 universities will belong to Type 1 category.
Type 2: Teaching universities
These will focus primarily on high quality teaching across disciplines and programmes including undergraduate, masters and doctoral, professional, vocational, certificate and diploma programmes, while also contribute to cutting-edge research. Such institutions will target enrollments between 5,000 and 25,000 or more on their campuses. The plan is to develop around 1,000 to 2,000 Type 2 universties in next two decades.
Type 3: Colleges
These institutions will largely run undergraduate programmes in addition to diploma and certificate programmes across disciplines and fields including vocational and professional. A large number of such autonomous colleges will provide high quality undergraduate education. The colleges will also offer certificate, diploma, and degree courses in vocational education. Faculty at these colleges will be encouraged to apply for research funding.
Missions Nalanda and Takshashila: In order to ensure presence of significant number of high quality Type 1, 2 and 3 institutions by 2030, Mission Nalanda (MN) and Mission Takshashila (MT) will be launched in tandem.
Mission Nalanda will ensure that there are at least 100 Type 1 and 500 Type 2 HEIs functioning vibrantly by 2030 with equitable regional distribution.
Mission Takshashila will strive to establish at least one high quality HEI close to every district of India, with 2 or 3 such HEIs in districts with larger population, each with residential facilities for students.
As a first step for MN, the focus will be on existing institutions that can be quickly developed into Type 1 and 2 institutions, such as the central universities, centrally funded technical institutions, NITs and large state universities. These will be fully residential universities. The MN and MT will receive shared funding by Central and state governments.
