Divide UoP faculties into 7 groups for easy functioning, says Adsul

With University of Pune (UoP) being in the news due to issues related to its examination department, former acting vice-chancellor UoP Dr Arun Adsul has come up with a solution of dividing the varsity into seven sections according to faculties and giving autonomy to each for exam-related work.u00a0

"Currently, strength of regular students in the university's affiliated colleges has risen to around 9 lakh, while external students has touched around 4.5 lakh. To manage the numbers, UoP has to think beyond dividing work on administrative level," said Adsul.

For Smooth functioning: Former acting V-C Dr Arun Adsul claims that his idea will ensure smooth execution of varsity responsibilities. File pic

Right now, the varsity deals with 11 different faculties. Conducting exams, maintaining timetables, paper setting of all faculties simultaneously twice a year is gigantic task.

"If the varsity is split into seven sections according to faculties, the overall burden of the exam department would go down. We can merge commerce, management and law in to a single faculty. All social and moral sciences can be slotted under a social science faculty. Similarly, we can make seven academic sections, which will take responsibility of all academic and administrative work of faculties," said Adsul.

Need for a divide
In his committee report submitted to state last year, noted educationist Dr Ram Takavle also highlighted need of dividing big state universities like Pune, Mumbai and Nagpur to manage the rising burden. Even though the state has not implemented Takavle committee report till now, Adsul is claiming that his new model is easy as it will not require any major changes in the established system of the university.

"If one wants to increase efficiency, he has to thoroughly understand the functioning of affiliated colleges, which is a major part of a varsity," he said and claimed that he had approached UoP vice chancellor Dr W N Gade recently with the proposal and also written about it to the government.u00a0

UoP number crunching
>> Over 700: Number of affiliated colleges of UoP

>> 9 lakh: Number of regular students

>> 4.5 lakh: Number of external students

>> 437: Number of exams held annuallyu00a0