It is a red letter day in the history of State Universities. In a major and epoch making decision, the Cabinet approved granting of financial autonomy to the State Universities in order to help improve all aspects of education at higher levels. Previously, the system was the Finance Department controlled the financial implication of universities and the heads of expenditures with allocation were decided by the Finance Ministry. After the announcement of new financial policy for the Universities, the Government will make allocations for the universities and then pass on the funds to them. It will be the responsibility of the universities to decide how they will spend and where. Of course, the funds will not be transferred to the universities directly but through a buffer body, which will also monitor the expenditures. Nevertheless the universities have their structure of allocating funds.
In another decision of the Cabinet, two cluster universities are coming up one each in Srinagar and Jammu. These are sort of umbrella cover for the Government college in each province that will be clustered in respective university. This is perhaps done primarily with the ideas of accessibility facility for the students. That way it is all right but post graduate classes in many streams have been opened in Government colleges and camp university colleges of which Jammu has nine and Kashmir has eight campuses. Quality of education imparted or research work done needs to be taken care of.
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