In an important development, the Mumbai University has been granted the status of category I of graded autonomy as per the Grant of Graded Autonomy Regulation, 2018 of the University Grants Commission (UGC). With this new status, the university will now have the liberty of taking various decisions such as setting up of sub-campuses, research parks and incubation centres, starting new departments or bringing new courses including starting online ones, hiring foreign faculty and deciding fee-structures, including those for foreign students, without the UGC approval, which was a mandate until now. The Mumbai University made the announcement Wednesday. After having received the highest grade of National Assessments and Accreditation Council (NAAC) among state’s public universities with a score of 3.65 in the last cycle, this is a new feather in its cap. Some other private and deemed institutions from the state already have this status, including Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) which is a public university. Vice Chancellor of Mumbai University Prof. Ravindra Kulkarni, said, “This category-I status has given the University academic freedom and through this a new avenue of educational opportunities will be opened. This new status will enable the university to take a major step towards internationalization of higher education in the context of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.” “Along with education, research and innovation, many activities such as skill-based education, new courses, online courses, creation of campuses can now be started in the university. Especially, due to this status, there will be a great contribution to the empowerment of distance and open learning institutes.” Apart from academic liberty at various levels, the new status will allow the university to engage in collaborations with foreign educational institutions which are featured in top 500 ranks of recognised world-university rankings. It will also be able to hire foreign faculty too on contract or tenure basis, upto twenty percent over and above of their total sanctioned faculty strength. What is category I of graded autonomy status? As per UGC’s Categorisation of Universities for Grant of Graded Autonomy Regulations, 2018, this new status is brought after recognising the need to create an enabling environment to support Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to become institutions of global excellence. “UGC recognizes that autonomy is pivotal to promoting and institutionalizing excellence in higher education and that the regulatory framework needs to facilitate better performing institutions towards excellence in higher education,” states the gazette notification issued by the ministry of human resource development in the year 2018.
