Mumbai: The proposal from a Malad-based college for the city’s first cluster university under National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, has hit a roadblock. Malad-Kandivali Education Society (MKES) had in Feb last year proposed forming a cluster university comprising three of its colleges, following the state’s issuance of guidelines. But the state has placed the proposal on hold after identifying a few deficiencies in it.
The concerns include the lack of designated space for a playground and that one of the constituents—MKES Institute of Management Studies and Research—does not offer a degree programme and is also not affiliated with the parent university (Mumbai University), which is a prerequisite. Sources from the higher and technical education department said the proposal could not be carried forward in its current form.
Among other objections raised, sources claimed, was that the proposed university would fulfil the requirement of the constructed area only if the junior college were to be relocated. But the proposal included the junior college area.
Nagindas Khandwala College (the lead college) and MKES College of Law were part of the proposed cluster.
MKES’s proposal was the only one from Mumbai since the release of the guidelines in Nov 2023. Two other proposals were from Kolhapur’s Warana Group and another one from a group in Wardha. Warana has already got the state’s approval.
An educationist told TOI that if the playground is made a mandatory criterion, most city colleges would not fit the bill and most also have junior colleges running on the same campus.
In Nov 2023, govt had claimed that at least 15 leading college managements had showed an interest in forming clusters, but after the regulations were released, many colleges took a step back to assess them. A few principals told TOI that cluster universities would be treated as state public universities and vice-chancellors would be appointed by the governor’s office, which was not acceptable to many managements.
Mumbai has two cluster universities, but they were formed under the central govt’s Rashtriya Uchchatar Shikshan Abhiyan scheme in 2019, which specified that the constituent colleges should be within a radius of 15km. The state govt’s guidelines under NEP relaxed the norms to allow colleges even within the same district to be part of the cluster.