The Academic Council of Mangalore University at a special meeting on Thursday unanimously rejected an application by the St. Aloysius College seeking approval for the three postgraduate courses it started in 2008-09.
The courses are M.Com in Applied Finance and Accounting, MA in Applied Economics, and MA in Communication.
The council said that the college did not have the university's permission for these courses. In addition, the council said, the college first started offering the courses in 2008 and sought university's approval in 2009, which was against the rules.
The council decided to forward its decision to the State Government.
The council took the decision based on a report of a three-member inspection committee it had set up to examine the college's request for considering the three courses for autonomous status. The committee visited the college on May 3.
The report tabled in the meeting said: “…the committee is of the unanimous opinion that the application for grant of autonomy for the three courses cannot be recommended. The committee opines that the college is not fit for autonomy for running the three courses.”
The report said that the committee came to know that students had completed their four-semester (two-year) courses and had already appeared for the fourth semester examinations.
Vice-Chancellor of the university T.C. Shivashankara Murthy presided over the meeting.
Prof. Murthy said that the university could not award degrees to students of such courses because they had been designed by the college against the norms. Autonomy given to the college did not mean full freedom to design courses against the regulations of the university, he said.
He wanted to know why the college did not seek the approval for the courses before starting them.
With regard to the future of students, Prof. Murthy said that as they were not registered with the university, the varsity could not award them degrees. Report
The report said that the college had not appointed qualified staff to teach the subjects that were included in the three courses. Those recruited for undergraduate courses were made to teach students in the postgraduate courses. The examination pattern adopted by the college for the three courses was not in line with the university regulations either, the report said.
The college had fixed the maximum internal assessment marks at 50 for the three courses instead of 20 prescribed by the university, the report pointed out.
MA Communication
The college had two teachers with Ph.D. degrees for the postgraduate course in communication. But, basically they had been recruited to teach undergraduate students and not the postgraduate course. Of the three visiting faculty members for this course, two were not qualified. One had an MBA degree while the other had an MA in English.
The report said that the marks cards issued to communication students mentioned the nomenclature of the course as Master of Communication and Media Studies instead of MA in Communication as approved by the university.
M.Com
The report said that the college had not recruited permanent teachers for M.Com in Applied Finance and Accounting. Five part-time teachers and two permanent teachers recruited for undergraduate courses were handling this course. One of the five part-time teachers had only a bachelor's degree and another did not have an M.Com degree, the report said.
