St Xavier's first in Kolkata to get autonomy

The 146-year-old St Xavier's College was on July 1 declared an autonomous body functioning under Calcutta University, by West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who praised the institution for setting examples in accountability and transparency.

Gandhi, also Chancellor of Calcutta University, said autonomy was not just a test for St Xavier's but also a test for the concept of autonomy.

"You will be looked upto and judged at the same time. If you make it succeed, you make the concept also succeed," he said.

Contending that autonomy must also be a by-word for complete accountability and transparency, Gandhi said the institution should not become an "opaque cocoon" but should define autonomy in the true sense.

Calcutta University (CU) vice-chancellor Ashis Banerjee said CU had grown too big to be run as a monolithic organisation and autonomy would be viewed as a significant step towards de-centralisation.

In future, CU will have to give certain amount of autonomy to other colleges also, he said. However, the colleges will have to attain high standards of education and administration to be considered for autonomous status, he said.

Present at the occasion were Subimal Sen, vice-chancellor, West Bengal Council of Higher Education, and Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, mayor of Kolkata.

Bhattacharya said that St Xavier's not only had the responsibility of setting a precedent, but of maintaining it for other colleges to follow.

College principal, P C Mathew, in his speech, described this event as a 'historic moment' for education in this state.

The college will be receiving Rs 1 crore as grant this year from the University Grants Commission, on achieving autonomy. It has already begun three post-graduate courses, amongst them physics with specialisation options in astro-physics and space science.

St Xavier's also planned to have an alumni club for its ex-students on its upcoming campus on the Eastern Metropolitan bypass.

The college is trying to procure a four acre plot adjacent to the six acres allotted to it by the government of West Bengal for the new campus for post-graduate studies, since the college has attained autonomous status recently.

The new campus will house a media centre with facilities for performing arts, an information technology centre, a centre for bio-sciences, a post-graduate management institute, research facilities, a hostel for girl students and the proposed club house for the alumni association.

"Since all these facilities will be difficult to accommodate on the six acre plot, we are looking for another four acres in the same area. The club will have all the works that is expected of any such modern facility", said Mathew.

The alumni association currently has 2000 life members.

The college has already created 30,000 squarefeet of space in the old campus on Park Street to accommodate three post graduate courses and several new graduate-level courses.

Currently, the SXC offers 19 undergraduate courses and three post graduate subjects.

The fresh batch of students beginning their graduate studies at the college this academic session will be the first to be subjected to the new curriculum after the college obtained the autonomous status.

A credit system with two semesters a year, a new syllabus, partial internal assessment based on projects, seminar presentations and specialisations are the changes that have been proposed.

From this academic session, the college has introduced a co-educational evening session for graduate studies in commerce.

In all, 240 seats and a dedicated faculty have been designated for this department.

An integrated five-year post graduate course in biotechnology has also been introduced, along with a post graduate department for physics.

"This year the number of applicants for admission to the college has gone up by almost 20 per cent. We received about 22,000 applications for a little more than 1,600 seats that we have in offer for the various streams", said Mathew.