In the past few decades, universities in India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh have adapted the college affiliation system they inherited from United Kingdom and allowed an increasing number of private colleges to open under the academic control of public universities. Under the affiliation system, a public university sets the academic standards (including a standard curriculum, examination papers and student evaluations) and grants private colleges permission to operate as long as they follow these standards. This arrangement allowed the governments to meet the increasing higher education demand without investing in new universities and still exercising quality control. The reason this system causes concern is that most colleges have no academic autonomy or flexibility under this system; resource starved universities often don’t have the wherewithal to update curriculum, conduct continuous evaluations or conduct examinations on time. The rigidity and sheer scale of these university systems makes them insensitive to labour market demands and difficult to reform.
The table above shows some of the largest universities in different South Asian countries in terms of enrollments and number of affiliated colleges. It illustrates the magnitude of the problem in the four countries and just how big the universities can get. Though American university systems can be comparable, the key difference is that every campus, department and faculty member in these universities enjoys much more academic autonomy and discretion than their counterparts in South Asia. Also, one large American system usually serves the whole state, while Indian states can have up to 6 or 7 such universities per state,Pakistani provinces can have 2 or 3 such universities, and Bangladesh affiliates all its undergraduate colleges through one university.
If you wish to read more about the affiliation system and it’s impact on quality of higher educaion, this report is a great place to start with: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/127201468294337164/Affiliated-colleges-in-South-Asia-is-quality-expansion-possible
Dear Soumya, thank you so much for compiling and sharing the information with us! It is astounding that each of these large universities have such a huge number of affiliated colleges. I am curious to find out if there is any central governing authority that administers quality assurance checks on these affiliated colleges?
The article that you provided in this blog mentions that the existence of a ‘complex stakeholders’ structure and multiple controls amongst the various government agencies (both federal and state) have resulted in confusion and policies “falling through the cracks” and also placed constraints on the affiliated colleges. But it doesn’t seem to mention how these affiliated colleges are being assessed on a periodical, or year by year basis?
Thanks Tim, I am glad you asked this question, because regulation is an important piece of this puzzle. very broadly, there are three ways in which affiliated colleges are supposed to be regulated in India – the University Grants Commission, a central body is supposed to lay down quality norms that all universities and colleges must follow. For technical and medical colleges, there are separate authorities (AICTE and MCI). Then there is the university itself which is supposed to not grant permission to sub-standard colleges (say, with poor infrastructure or under qualified faculty). Thirdly, there is a National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), which does peer-group assessments of schools and accredits them. Out of the three, only NAAC does an inspection every five years, the other two only take action against a college if some serious irregularities are reported. Thus most colleges, once established, go on without any interference from any regulators and don’t really have any major reporting requirements. All three of these channels are susceptible to corruption, which allows very poor quality institutions to continue operating through bribing, favour exchange etc.
However, even if obvious mischief through corruption can be controlled, the sheer size of these university systems is too unwieldy. The real sticky problem is, how do you provide academic autonomy to institutions which serve such a high number of students, especially high number of students per faculty? How can you maintain quality without standardizing curriculum and teaching when so many colleges need oversight? Sadly, these are questions that the government is not really trying to find answers to. Labour market pressures are forcing some institutions to close down and others to improve their quality, but there isn’t a systemic overhaul as yet. A new national education scheme (RUSA) is trying to address some of these issues by forcing large universities to break down into smaller institutions with no more than 100 affiliated colleges. But there is significant political opposition to this – because many politicians own colleges in India and everyone wants to be affiliated with the old and well known university. I suppose, looking at how China manages it’s large student body may well be a good idea for India.