Earlier this month, I had written about some of the administrative reforms being implemented in the Higher Education system of the state through amendments in the Karnataka Universities Ordinance, 2020. (Refer – https://medium.com/@Drashwathcn/reforms-brought-in-through-the-karnataka-state-universities-amendment-ordinance-2020-536145a06c43)

The Government of Karnataka under the leadership of CM Shri BS Yediyurappa has continued to focus on similar reforms. Yesterday, I launched a portal to manage the affiliation process of colleges with the universities of Karnataka with the aim of vastly increasing the transparency of the affiliation process while at the same time removing irregularities and scope for corruption. 

This portal, developed by the NIC (National Informatics Centre) will act as a module of the  Unified University Management System (UUMS) also developed by the NIC. The primary intent of this portal is to digitize and simplify the transactions between colleges and universities during the affiliation process, thus replacing the current creaky manual process. Colleges can now upload relevant data and documents regarding their own affiliation or for the approval of new courses, onto this affiliation portal remotely. At the same time, the decisions of the universities too will be visible to the colleges immediately. 

Until now, a lot of time would be routinely wasted in this process which was at the same time very opaque and non transparent. Everyone suffered due to this, most importantly our students who had to suffer through substandard infrastructure and facilities, non availability of fresh courses and more. The introduction of this portal has removed a lot of possibilities to commit irregularities. It is my firm opinion that it will contribute to significantly increase the quality of education in the state. 

An additional decision we have taken is that we have made it compulsory for all universities to use UUMS from the 15th of July 2020.  I am glad that the Vice Chancellors of  all State Universities  have agreed to adopt the same. This will be the sole mode of communication between the department and the universities from that day onwards. This too is a major step forward in the Higher Education Reforms process of the state.