Empowered autonomous colleges in Maharashtra hit joint degree hurdle

Mumbai: Three years after granting ‘empowered autonomy' status to select colleges and formally making provision for it under the statutes of Maharashtra Public Universities Act, state government and public universities have realised that University Grants Commission (UGC) does not currently permit the awarding of joint degrees, a central feature of the policy. Even though the first batch of students from these empowered autonomous colleges is set to graduate, they will not receive degrees carrying both the college's and the affiliating university's names and logos, as planned originally, said sources.While the institutions can still benefit from the enhanced academic status and administrative flexibility that comes with empowered autonomy — a step above regular autonomous status — the inability to award joint degrees weaken one of its key benefits. Under Mumbai University alone, around 25 leading colleges in the city have been granted empowered autonomy status, including St Xavier's, Jai Hind, Ramnarain Ruia, Mithibai, NM, Sophia, RA Podar, SIES, KJ Somaiya, Ramniranjan Jhunjhunwala, Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work, Birla and engineering colleges such as Sardar Patel Institute of Technology and DJ Sanghvi.State government and public universities' officials were not available for comment.A city college principal said, "We have been announcing that joint degrees will be granted to students with our college's name and logo during our orientation programmes" The batch graduating in 2025-26 was the first to get the joint degree under the new status. "Though there is no official directive, we are hearing unofficially that the joint degrees cannot be granted," said another principal, adding that names of universities such as Mumbai and Pune definitely held value, but getting the college's name on the degree would have elevated their status, too, nationally and internationally.Another principal pointed out that the government appears to be revisiting and revising some of the decisions taken during the early stages of implementing the National Education Policy 2020.As per the statutes, colleges which have a NAAC cumulative grade point average of 3.01 or above or have at least 60% of their courses accredited by the National Board of Accreditation and have enjoyed the autonomy status for at least five years, are eligible to apply for the status. After following a prescribed procedure, colleges were granted the empowered autonomy status. Though the concept of empowered autonomy was provisioned in the Public Universities' Act (of 2016), in 2023, uniform statutes enlisted their powers based on a state committee's recommendation and in line with the NEP's idea of having degree-awarding institutions. While there was no change in the funding and grant status given to such aided institutions, colleges enjoyed academic liberties.An official from one of the state universities, however, said that many of these leading institutions did not use the ‘empowered' status extensively, which allowed them to collaborate with each other and offer programmes jointly. "Though a few such experiments have been done, not many colleges are collaborating or sharing resources," said the official, adding that in future joint degrees provision could be made available.