Students rejoice as 24 new colleges get approved under Mumbai University

The Maharashtra government on Friday approved 61 new colleges in the state, 24 of which fall the purview of Mumbai University. Off the 24 colleges under MU, ten are law colleges.

Per the rules, the colleges had to be approved before June 15. However, since more time was required to verify the proposals, the government extended the date till July 31 at the recent cabinet meeting. The resolution was passed on Friday after a gap of two years.

In two year period, the state government received almost 300 applications, but approved just one college because the remaining ones did not fulfill all the criteria required for approvals. During start of the previous academic year, the state education minister had even decided against approving new colleges due to the excess number of seats available in colleges across Maharashtra.

The colleges, which mostly offer popular courses, can choose to start accepting admissions from this academic year itself. However, certain colleges that were approved for courses like B.COM (Bachelors of Commerce), B.A (Bacherlor of Arts), B.M.S (Bachelor of Management Studies) and B.M.M (Bachelor of Mass Media) are in a fix as most other colleges offering the course started a month back.

The approval of additional colleges is good news for Mumbai’s undergraduate students, who now have over 2,000 new seats available under MU. The only thing that’s left for the colleges to do is to take a no-objection certificate from the joint director of higher education before applying for affiliation with the MU.

“Once the colleges comply with the GR, the online admission process will begin. If necessary, we will extend the dates,” Anil Patil, director of the Board of College and University Development (BCUD) told a leading daily.

While the approval may work in students’ favour, the university, who is facing a serious staff crunch, might have to bear the brunt of handling more colleges. According to one report, the number of colleges affiliated to the university has increased from 245 in 1985 to the more than 750 today. However, only eight new positions for non-teaching employees have been approved since then.

Registrar M A Khan, is hopeful that with the increase in the number of approved colleges, the government will sanction more posts in the university.