A large number of privately promoted undergraduate colleges with excellent reputation have not been granted autonomy and are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating university. The reluctance of government to cede full governance of excellent colleges to professional academics is typified by the anomalous status of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Here are India’s Top 100 non-autonomous colleges 2021-22 The Indian media dominated by beneficiaries of licence-permit-quota raj in higher education seldom debates or covers it. Yet pervasive control-and-command of institutions of higher education by the Central government in post-independence India has dumbed down the country’s higher education system. None of India’s 979 universities, some of them of over 150 years vintage, are ranked among the Top 200 in the authoritative annual World University Rankings of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE), while neighbouring communist China has seven universities ranked among the Top 200 of both rating agencies. A major cause is that India’s State-dominated patchwork higher education governance system is a welter of confusion and contradictions. For instance, the Delhi-based, Central government-funded University Grants Commission (UGC) which monitors, licences and controls all of India’s 29,000 arts, science, and commerce colleges (10,300 engineering, technical colleges and business management institutes are controlled by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)) has conferred academic and administrative autonomy on only 827 undergrad colleges that are high performance institutions and certified as such through an ‘A’ rating of the Bengaluru-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). However there seems to be no logical rationale for conferring autonomous status. Consequently a large number of privately-promoted undergrad colleges with excellent reputation are not autonomous. They are compulsorily affiliated with and governed by parent universities strictly supervised by UGC. Conversely a large number of private colleges with arguably lesser reputation and learning outcomes have been granted full autonomy. Despite being awarded NAAC ‘A’ grading which is a mandatory precondition of autonomy, many are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities. While these fine distinctions tend to be ignored by mainstream media such as India Today, Outlook among other news magazines which lump and rank them together, in EducationWorld — a specialist education-focused news publication — we believe it is incumbent upon us to acknowledge these fine differences. Therefore in our annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings of the past few years we have been ranking privately-promoted autonomous, non-autonomous and government autonomous colleges in separate and distinct league tables. This classification confusion rooted in the reluctance of government to cede full governance of education institutions to professional academics is typified by the anomalous status of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Although this privately promoted institution is consistently ranked India’s premier arts, science and commerce undergrad college by most media publications and is eminently qualified for full autonomy, it enjoys less autonomy than St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and indeed all 229 private autonomous colleges ranked in this issue of EducationWorld. While SXM has full freedom to set its syllabuses and curriculum, St.…
