Page 33 - EducationWorld May 2021

prescribe tuition fees. Board of Accreditation of the All In- eyed school-leavers have to carefully
They can also constitute their own dia Council for Technical Education) choose the best of a bad lot undergrad
academic councils, board of studies for at least three programme(s) or be colleges most suitable to develop the
and finance committees and shall have awarded autonomy by a correspond- cognitive skills required for success in
“complete administrative autonomy ing accreditation grade/score from a the increasingly complex 21st century
and the privilege of appointing their UGC empanelled accreditation agen- workplaces. We hope our league tables
own administrative staff and teaching cy”. Unsurprisingly, only 827 colleges presented in the following pages will
faculty including principal”. Under out of the country’s 39,931 colleges aid and enable them to make this dif-
s.3, UGC also has the power to confer have been awarded autonomous sta- ficult but critically important choice.
autonomy upon high performance pri- tus by UGC (March 31, 2021). A parallel objective of these league
vate ‘deemed-to-be universities’ which Thus over the past seven decades tables is to enable college adminis-
are also fully autonomous, except that government has established an almost trations to reflect upon their relative
they are prohibited from affiliating complete stranglehold over higher ed- strengths and weaknesses and to ad-
colleges, a privilege (irrationally) re- ucation in India. Unsurprisingly, none dress them to raise teaching-learning
stricted to public universities. of India’s reportedly 39,931 colleges standards to global levels.
However, UGC prescribes stiff and 979 universities — some of them In this issue we present league ta-
conditions for awarding colleges and of over 150 years vintage — are ranked bles ranking the country’s best private
universities autonomous status. Ap- in the Top 200 global league tables of autonomous, government autonomous
plicant colleges must be of more than Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) or Times and non-autonomous colleges, and
ten years standing and “accredited by Higher Education, the authoritative Top 100 private engineering colleges.
either NAAC (National Assessment London-based agencies which rank Our June issue will feature the Top
and Accreditation Council) with mini- universities worldwide. It’s against 300 private and government univer-
mum ‘A’ Grade or by NBA (National this backdrop that India’s bright- sities, and Top 100 private B-schools.

MAY 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 33