An typically much less mentioned characteristic of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 is the new regulatory system envisaged for affiliating schools. The goal of the new system is to foster empowerment and autonomy by step by step phasing out the affiliation system over a interval of 15 years via a technique of graded autonomy.
The NEP suggests that every current college ought to play the position of a mentor for its affiliated schools, and allow them to develop their very own capabilities and obtain minimal benchmarks in tutorial and curricular issues, educating and evaluation, governance reforms, monetary robustness, and administrative effectivity with a purpose to grow to be self-reliant. All affiliated schools must attain the minimal required requirements to safe accreditation benchmarks and purchase the standing of an autonomous degree-granting establishment. Needless to say, it is a giant reform for which nation-wide efforts and governmental help is a sine qua non.
Untethering schools
The college-university affiliation system has lengthy served as the foundational construction for larger schooling and is so deeply entrenched in the Indian larger schooling system that disassociating schools with the college sounds unrealistic. Universities conduct affiliation for schools in accordance with the University Grants Commission (UGC) tips to keep up tutorial requirements, guarantee uniform curriculum and examinations, and regulate infrastructure and college high quality. Moreover, faculty affiliation in India is not a one-time course of. The affiliation is often granted initially for one 12 months and renewed yearly or periodically.
However, whereas the standard college affiliation mannequin as soon as supplied centralised management and administrative stability, it now appears to hinder the development, autonomy, and high quality of faculties. The college affiliation system is now riddled with systemic inefficiencies, archaic tutorial rigidity, and administrative challenges that impede the progress of faculties.
Multiple challenges
One of the most important issues with the affiliation system is the overwhelming burden it locations on universities. Most universities in India are affiliated with a whole bunch of faculties, and entrusted to handle examinations, consider reply scripts, design curriculum, monitor faculty compliance, and oversee tutorial and extracurricular actions for an amazing variety of college students. The consideration of useful resource strained universities, particularly State universities, will get diverted from their core features, resembling analysis, innovation, college growth, and collaboration, attributable to heavy administrative workloads. As a consequence, universities are compelled to behave merely as bureaucratic our bodies as a substitute of pushing the boundaries of information each for college students and college.
The lack of autonomy for affiliated schools poses one other problem. Under the current college affiliation system, it is obligatory for all schools to comply with the laws, syllabi, examination patterns, and administrative directions issued by the affiliating college. This dependency prevents schools from designing their very own programs that align with their native or industrial wants, and rising market tendencies. This rigidity imposes uniformity at the price of creativity, denying schools the freedom to distinguish themselves via specialised programs, fashionable pedagogical practices, or interdisciplinary initiatives. As a consequence, the potential for innovation is stifled.
Then there is the sluggish tempo at which curriculum reforms happen below the college affiliation mannequin. Since universities oversee numerous schools, revising curricula requires intensive consultations, committee conferences with the board of research and division councils, and administrative approvals from tutorial councils. This course of typically takes a really very long time, inflicting course content material to grow to be outdated by the time reforms are applied. The instructional wants of scholars in disciplines resembling engineering and expertise change very quickly, however the affiliation system is merely not agile sufficient to reply with the required pace.
Moreover, the affiliation mannequin, regardless of its greatest intentions to standardise schooling, has led to fairly the reverse. While all schools might comply with the similar curriculum, the precise supply of schooling varies drastically attributable to the big gaps in infrastructure. Many schools function with insufficient laboratories, inadequate library amenities, outdated gear, and a scarcity of certified academics. Such disparities weaken the credibility of standardised studying outcomes, as college students from completely different schools below the similar college might graduate with vastly completely different ranges of talent and competence.
An alternate mannequin
While the college affiliation system as soon as performed an important position in increasing larger schooling, its limitations now hinder progressive instructional aspirations.
Instead of affiliations, schools could also be inspired to take part in the National Institutional Ranking Framework/National Board of Accreditation train which is grounded in established high quality standards. The future of upper schooling in India hinges on empowering establishments with autonomy, flexibility, and the capability to innovate freely — situations the affiliation system can now not adequately present.
Milind Kumar Sharma teaches in the Department of Production and Industrial Engineering at MBM University, Jodhpur
Published – March 18, 2026 01:39 am IST
