BHUBANESWAR: The issue of regulating self-financing courses (SFCs) in government universities in the State has taken a new turn. Days after the State government overruled the Chancellor of Universities and Governor Prof Ganeshi Lal’s directives on regulating self-financing courses (SFCs), the latter has reasserted his powers to ask the universities to come up with modalities for the purpose.
The Chancellor on Thursday held a meeting with Vice-Chancellors (VCs) of Utkal University, Rama Devi Women’s University, Ravenshaw University and Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanja Deo University to discuss the issues related to SFCs in their institutions, both in regular and public-private partnership (PPP) modes.
Sources said the VCs have sought one year’s time to regulate the courses and implement the directives by the next academic session (2023-24). The directive on SFCs will be only applicable to universities and not the colleges affiliated to them.
The Chancellor, being the highest authority of the university system, had last month expressed concern over the way SFCs are being run by the institutions. On April 12, Secretary to the Chancellor Saswat Mishra had informed the universities about the measures to be taken by them which include capping of students strength in all such courses at 20 per cent (pc) of the total strength of all regular courses and refraining from launching any such courses from the ensuing academic year 2022-23. The Higher Education department had then sent a notice to all the 12 government universities to implement the Governor’s directive but within a few days, withdrew it.
With the VCs writing to the Chancellor expressing concerns over implementing his orders from the new academic session, the latter called for a meeting with some of them on Thursday. While VC of Utkal University Sabita Acharya said they are examining the issue, her counterpart in Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanja Deo University Kishor Kumar Basa said they will not have to curtail the SFC seats if faculty recruitment is done within a year.
VC of Rama Devi Women’s University Aparajita Choudhury said the university being relatively newer and smaller in comparison to the other universities, it will not have any issues in implementing the Chancellor’s directive on capping student strength of the SFCs. VC of Ravenshaw Sanjay Nayak could not be reached. Utkal University runs over 20 SFCs including three on PPP mode.