It’s important to note that among (state) government promoted colleges countrywide, autonomous institutions enjoy special standing and privilege by virtue of their UGC conferred autonomous status. Since 2018 when EducationWorld introduced its inaugural EW India Arts, Science & Commerce (ASC) Colleges Rankings, we focused on rating and ranking private colleges. However this year, on the advice of members of our Board of Advisors and eminent academics, we have divided the broad category of ASC colleges into three sub-categories: private autonomous, government autonomous (as classified by the University Grants Commission) and Top 100 non-autonomous colleges. Until March 31, 2018, the Delhi-based UGC has awarded 708 colleges countrywide autonomous status i.e, academic autonomy. While over 38,000 non-autonomous colleges are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities, autonomous colleges are permitted to review existing courses/programmes and restructure, redesign and prescribe their own courses/programmes of study and syllabi; introduce new courses/programmes; evolve independent performance evaluation systems, conduct examinations and notify results. They are also allowed to issue mark sheets, migration and other certificates subject to degrees being awarded by parent university with the name of the college permitted to be inscribed on the degree certificate. Unsurprisingly, UGC has set stringent conditions precedent for awarding colleges much-prized autonomous status. Applicant colleges must be of more than ten years vintage and “accredited by either NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) with minimum ‘A’ Grade or by NBA (National Board of Accreditation of the All India Council for Technical Education) for at least three programme(s) or be awarded autonomy by a corresponding accreditation grade/score from a UGC empanelled accreditation agency”. Of the 747 colleges conferred autonomous status by UGC, 643 are privately promoted and 104 in the (state) government sector. To compile the 2020-21 EW league tables of India’s best private and government autonomous (as well as Top 100 non-autonomous) colleges, the well-known Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) interviewed 4,813 sample respondents comprising 1,946 college/ university faculty and 2,467 final year college students and persuaded them to rate India’s sufficiently well-known colleges on five parameters of tertiary education excellence, viz, competence of faculty, faculty welfare and development, curriculum and pedagogy, industry placement record, infrastructure and quality of leadership/ governance. Low-profile institutions rated by less than 25 respondents are not ranked. Though UGC’s criteria for grant of autonomy are uniformly applicable to all applicant institutions, it’s widely acknowledged that private autonomous colleges are several notches above government autonomous colleges, promoted and managed by cash-strapped state governments which nevertheless set tuition fees very low. The perceptual difference between private and government autonomous colleges is evident from the huge gap in the total scores awarded by this year’s sample respondents to top-ranked colleges in the two categories. While St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai is ranked India’s #1 private autonomous college with a total score of 630, the top-ranked government autonomous college — Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam — has an aggregate score of 539, a difference of almost 100 points. Therefore, to avoid apples and oranges comparisons, privately…
