Mangalore University Vice-Chancellor T.C. Shivashankara Murthy on Thursday maintained that the university was not responsible for the problems being faced by students of certain autonomous colleges.
Speaking at a meet-the-press programme here, he said the colleges were themselves to blame for the mess because they had failed to adhere to guidelines and statutes.
Students and teachers of St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College recently staged a demonstration alleging that the university was deliberately denying degree certificates to students and depriving them of an opportunity to apply for postgraduate courses.
On the one hand, the colleges had not adhered to the examination scheme as laid down by the relevant statutes, and on the other, they had failed to transfer the registration fees to the university, although they had collected them from students and kept in a separate account.
The university examination scheme prescribed 20 per cent marks for internal assessment whereas the autonomous colleges had increased it to 30 marks. The university could not discriminate between students of these colleges and those of the other colleges by allowing such violation of the statues, he said. The statutes made it binding on the part of colleges to transfer the registration fees collected from students to the university. One college had not transferred it to the university for three years.
Autonomous colleges had no authority to change the examination scheme of the university, he said.
Stating that the issues related to autonomous colleges had perturbed him, he said he was disillusioned by rampant commercialisation of higher education.
