Wednesday, May 19, 2010

• In metros, colleges must have at least two acres of undisputed land
• Permanent affiliation only after 5 years of temporary affiliation, renewable annually

New Delhi: All new colleges will have to comply with basic infrastructure and faculty requirements, stipulated by the University Grants Commission, for getting university affiliation. These include at least two acres of undisputed land and facilities in metros, and five acres with adequate infrastructure and faculty in non-metros.

The UGC (Affiliation of Colleges by Universities) Regulation, 2009, sent to all Central and State universities, will come into effect from the coming academic session. There are 41 Central and 256 State universities. The new institutions will have to get temporary affiliation, renewable annually, for at least five years, after which they can be considered for permanent affiliation by a university.

For temporary affiliation, an institution needs to have administrative, academic and other buildings with sufficient accommodation to meet the immediate academic and other space requirements.

An institution needs to create and maintain corpus funds, varying from Rs. 15 lakh to Rs. 35 lakh depending on courses, to meet exigencies. It will apply for affiliation, specifying its development plan for 10 years and its faculty recruitment policy.

The university will grant temporary affiliation only after an inspection by an expert committee, which will examine the library, laboratories, classrooms, the teacher-student ratio and academic excellence.

Permanent affiliation will enable colleges to get UGC assistance.

Colleges are barred from collecting an arbitrary fee. It has to be based on UGC norms. Capitation fee or donation or any other corrupt practice has been banned.

Teaching and non-teaching staff have to be appointed on merit, based on qualifications prescribed by the university or the UGC, and have to be paid full salary in the scale prescribed by the UGC or the Centre. No appointment has to be made on donations or any other consideration.

Violation of the regulations can lead to the UGC forcing universities to withdraw affiliation to the erring institutions.

In another notification, the UGC has said all Central and deemed universities will need to have at least one teacher for every 10 students for their post-graduate programmes in science and one for every 25 students at the undergraduate level. The UGC regulations prescribe a varied set of teacher-student ratios for different streams, in addition to laying down that a teacher's workload should not be less than 40 hours a week for 30 working weeks in an academic year.

For postgraduate programmes, it is mandatory for universities to have at least one teacher for every 10 students in science, and media and mass communication studies, and one teacher for every 15 students in humanities, social sciences as well as commerce and management.

Undergraduate programmes must have at least one teacher for every 15 students in the media and mass communication departments, while the ratio should be 1:30 for social sciences and 1:25 for the science stream.