What are self-financed educational colleges in India?

A self-financed college in India is one which does not receive any financial aid from the Central Govt. of India or from the State Govt. where it is located. They also do not get any financial grants from the UGC nor do they get any benefits from UGC. Such an institute finances itself through the fees paid by the students who enroll for the courses and may get private financing from other sources, such as a corporate house. A self-financed college in India may get recognition for its courses from AICTE. They could be either entirely autonomous or depend on an Indian University for the course curriculum and admissions. A self-financed college in India has its own procedure for selecting candidates to fill up the seats in the institute. That is, it will have its own eligibility criteria and own methods of admission, which may or may not include an entrance test and/or personal interview & group discussions. A self-financed college in India also sets its own rules and regulations. Whether or not a self-financed college is autonomous or not, it must follow the norms set for all educational institutes of its type. For example, the National Council of Teachers Education (NCTE) sets the norms for B.Ed. colleges.

Disadvantages of self-financed colleges

The biggest hurdle of a self-financed college is to fill up the seats. Without students, there can be no money to maintain the campus, not to mention pay faculty & other staff. A lot of resources can go waste if this happens, as is often the case. Consider, for example, a selffinanced engineering college. According to the official rules of AICTE, an engineering college must have the required infrastructure & facilities as well as number of teaching staff on the basis of the intake capacity. If the actual capacity is considered, then the resources become worthless. Statistics have shown that sometimes as high as 50,000 seats lie vacant in a State's colleges! In Tamil Nadu alone, in the last academic year over 64,000 seats in over 500 engineering colleges remained vacant.

Then there is the main question: does a self-financed institute offer good quality education? Not

necessarily. This can be best established by checking out results of major exams. Consider, for example, the State of Kerala. As per a report in the Times of India (May 15th, 2012), when the Kerala University of Health Sciences declared its final year results of its various medical courses, it was found that self-financed private colleges had poor results as compared to Govt. colleges many in the former category did not get even 70% pass whereas quite a few Govt. colleges showed a pass percentage of 90%.

Consider the fees too of a self-financed college in India. More often than not, you end up paying fees of 2 semesters for 1 semester!

Finally there is the issue of the faculty & their pay. Unless the self-financed college has got access to a large amount of funds, they cannot get highly experienced staff to teach for the long term. It is often said that the faculty get very low pay in a self-financed college & little or no benefits despite being highly qualified and experienced. With no leave benefits and little job security, it is tough for such teachers to sustain themselves & their families. Those few selffinanced colleges which can afford to give high pay generally expect the faculty to toe their line and remain long-term fixtures without job-hopping.

Now let's look at the other side of the picture

Advantages of self-financed colleges

One plus point in favour of a self-financed college is that it can have an admission process based strictly on merit & not bother about the reservation system. Strictly on the basis of marks students can be admitted to the institute. The institute also need not necessarily have an entrance exam at all, which would be a relief to many who despite getting good marks in a qualifying Board exam are unable to deal with the tough questions of an entrance exam.

Furthermore, a self-financed college could have a smaller batch of students per academic year and ensure individual attention to each student rather than have 1 teacher a large number of students as is generally the case.

Then, of course, there is the campus infrastructure. If the self-financed college is having no dearth of funds, then there is no limit to the high quality facilities that it can offer. Students can get great labs & equipment, sports facilities and hostel rooms not to mention good food on campus.

Conclusion
The core issue actually is not self-financed institutes V/s Govt. institutes. The core issue is not which provides better education but the fact that overall there is no proper monitoring of the education system as a whole. Proper & regular checks should be made of not just self-financed institutes, but of all educational institutes. Despite having regulatory norms & guidelines, there are no regular checks done at a large majority of institutes in India. Self-financed colleges and so-called Govt. colleges, not to mention private coaching classes, are mushrooming all over India at an alarming rate without any regulatory measures. It is time the Ministry of Education wakes up!