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
