College Autonomy on Quality in Higher Education: A Study Based on Students’ Satisfaction

Abstract

Quality in higher education has become the prime task of countries worldwide. The role of higher education is vital in the development of a nation. It is largely accepted that autonomy and quality are related directly. The NPE 1986 ensures quality and excellence in Indian higher education by providing grant of autonomy to potential colleges by the universities. These autonomous colleges are empowered with academic freedoms. The UGC has been providing substantial grants to autonomous colleges to increase the quality in education. The role of NAAC in assessing the quality of autonomous colleges using prefixed criteria is no doubt desirable but not acceptable from research point of view. Use of prefixed criteria to judge the quality of goods and services had been ounced here. The trend, all over the globe, has to evaluate quality of goods and services in terms of how far the goods and services satisfy customers’ or stakeholders’ needs and expectations. Since higher education had ome under the service sector, its customers or stakeholders are mainly students, parents, teachers and principals. herefore, the quality of college autonomy needs to be studied in terms of how far the services provided by autonomous colleges focus on customer’s needs & expectations. The present study is unique because, it investigates for the first time the quality in higher education empirically in terms of customers’ satisfaction. In this context, the present paper intends to highlight on the practices of college autonomy in Odisha on the basis of empirical findings and it was revealed that college autonomy has positive impact on quality in higher education in terms of students’ perception.