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VI. UNITS OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Evening Colleges It is assumed that 400 should normally be the highest enrolment in any evening college. If students justify, this may be increased to a maximum of 500. Since the degree course in each college has been proposed to be of four years, its enrolment will respectively be 100, 200, 300, and 400 and 400 during the first, second, third, fourth and fifth years of the Plan assuming, of course, that there is no falling off of the enrolment through some of the students giving up the studies and all will be getting promotion from year to year in the home examinations at the end of each year. The latter condition, particularly that with respect to the falling off of the enrolment, will not be fulfilled; however, it would be recommended that enrolment each year to the first year class of the degree course may be permitted to be proportionately higher, say 150. Thus it may be assumed that each college will create ultimately an effective enrolment facility of 400 students; and on that basis a maximum of 100 colleges all over the country would be required to provide the evening college facility and meet the Plan target of 40,000 enrolment. This number of colleges would mean about 7 to 8 per cent of all the graduate and post-graduate colleges which would be there in India by the end of the Third Plan and is, therefore, not a high number.
Correspondence Courses Each university selected for correspondence courses will cater to students coming from a large area and covering hundred miles around it. It may, therefore, be safe to assume that an enrolment of 2,000 correspondence course students will be reasonable in any university. Experience in Australia (where such courses have been going on for more than 50 years) and elsewhere is that such courses involve a good percentage of wastage of students in the sense that many of them leave the course without completing it. Fortunately the wastage is highest in the first year of enrolment, and majority of the students who complete the first year course continue it. What would be the extent of such wastage in special conditions of India is difficult to say without trying out the experiment for some time. However, the enrolment in the first year of the course could be permitted to be higher in order to allow for the likely wastage and yet achieve the ultimate enrolment target of 2,000 in each university during the Third Plan. This would mean a selection of 10 universities A over the country, in order to achieve a total enrolment of 20,000 through such courses. If in spite of a very high population density in this country, the enrolment of 2,000 in one university is considered, in practice, to be too high this can be reduced ill some cases. In that case more than 10 universities will have to be chosen to organize correspondence courses. It may, however, be stated that with fairly well-developed means of communication in the country it does not seem desirable to spread the Correspondence course work over too many universities; else it will be uneconomical.
The scheme of correspondence courses will be a new scheme and the work involved will be completely new to our universities. It may, therefore, not be wrong to assume, for proper planning, that the first year of the Third Plan will be used up in Correspondence with the universities for selecting 10 or more of them, in enabling them to consult their bodies like academic councils, etc., in constructing buildings and purchasing furniture, equipment, printing facility etc., in recruiting teachers and other
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staff, and, above all, in writing the correspondence lessons and making them ready for use. Thus the actual teaching work can commence only in the second year of the Plan. Hence the effective distribution of the 2,000 enrolment over the second, third, fourth and fifth years of the Plan will respectively be 500, 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000. Since some students are bound to leave the course incomplete, particularly in the first year, it will be reasonable to allow a higher enrolment, say, up to 1,000 in each of the first year classes.
VI. COSTING PATTERN
Evening Colleges In the fourth year of the commencement of an evening college when it reaches its full enrolment of 400, it is assumed that the following full-time personnel will be needed there :-
1. Vice-Principal
2. Teachers-12
3. Ministerial assistance
4. Librarian-1
To the above will have to be added the cost of electricity, rent, library, stationery, contingencies etc.
Thus the total expenditure per annum on the college will be :-
Rs.
Vice-Principal 9,600
Teachers 43,200
Establishment 8,500
* Library 8,400
Miscellaneous 6,000
TOTAL 75,700
The college will also have an income through tuition fees which is estimated at Rs. 57,600.
Thus the net deficit in each college per annum from the fourth year onwards will be (Rs. 75,700-Rs. 57,600) Rs. 18,100.
During the first three years of the commencement of each evening college the pattern of expenditure and income will be different than the one given above. Although the Vice-Principal may be needed from the very beginning to organise, the college properly, yet teachers, and other staff will have to be increased during the years as the enrolment increases. Hence the recurring expenditure per student during the first three years will be a little higher.
The total net expenditure an the 100 evening colleges during the five years of the Plan expressed in lakhs of rupees is estimated as under :
1961-62 1962-63 1963-64 1964-65 1965-66 Total
Recurring 4.5 10.0 14.0 18.0 18.0 64.5
Non-recurring 2.0 1.0 - - - 3.0
*This covers as recommended by the Library Committee of the University Grants Commission a provision of Rs. 15 per student and Rs. 200 per teacher for library service, including also the salary of library staff and other items of expenditure on the library,
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Correspondence Courses As recommended above, a new department of correspondence course will have to be set up in each selected university. This will need construction of buildings for the director, deputy director, teachers, office, storing of lessons, press, library and proportionate number of staff quarters and for providing furniture, equipment etc. to it. Since lessons have to be written out and copies made for each student, suitable duplicating and printing facilities on a good scale are necessary. These should also include suitable provision for duplicating and printing of diagrams, illustration etc. which are needed in the lessons for several subjects. The work can begin with three or four duplicating machines and a multiright machine. The department will need for its lessons and other work large quantities of paper of certain type. The medium of instruction being the postal services, postal stamps, envelopes, forms and other stationery will be needed in specially big quantities. Correspondingly, the clerical establishment in this department will have to be high.
The need and justification for a strong and distinctive library service has already been indicated before. This has also to be provided suitably.
Although the responsibility for teaching correspondence course students will be that of the corresponding departments of the university so that the same teachers teach both the correspondence and the other students, yet additional teachers will have to be given to each department in proportion to the correspondence course students who have offered that particular subject. Financial provision on the basis of an average teacher-pupil ratio of 1 : 40 is recommended for this purpose. This can, however, be modified later, on the basis of the actual expenditure of the work.
Thus in the fourth year of the commencement of the correspondence courses when the maximum enrolment of 2,000 will be reached in the university (i.e. in the fifth year of the Plan) a staff of approximately the following dimensions may be needed :-
Director (1)
Deputy Director (1)
Teachers (50)
Library staff
Technician
Ministerial and others
In addition, an initial expenditure will be needed for non- recurring items like buildings, furniture, office and other equipment, initial stock of library etc. in order to start the new department of correspondence courses and a lumpsum provision on a reasonable scale will have to be made for that purpose. This initial expenditure for each selected university is estimated as under :-
Rs.
in lakhs
Buildings (for the department office, store,
press, library, staff quarters etc.,) 1.50
Furniture, equipment (for office and other),
press machinery etc. 0.75
Initial library stock 0.40
Paper, ink etc., for lessons 0.35
TOTAL 3.0
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To cover ten universities on the above average scale, it will be Rs. 30.00 lakhs. This expenditure may be spread over the first two years of the Plan.
Expenditure on other items could be estimated in detail and separately, but it seems to be the experience in some places that the cost of correspondence courses is approximately half of the cost of regular university education at the corresponding stage. In any case, it may be reasonable to begin on that scale and make modifications on the basis of experience in our own conditions. The present cost of university education in India is about Rs. 295 per student per annum. This may increase a little further during the Third Plan. The cost of correspondence course is estimated at Rs. 150 per annum per student. As explained earlier, it may be assumed that the actual teaching work through correspondence course commences only in the second year of the Plan so that the effective enrolment in the second, third, fourth and fifth years of the Plan will be 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 respectively. At the rate of Rs. 150 per student per annum the recurring expenditure needed for these students in any university during these years will thus be Rs. 75,000, 1,50,000, Rs. 2,25,000 and Rs. 3,00,000 respectively. Since the academic sessions generally begin in July, there will be no recurring expenditure during the first three months of the first year of the commencement of the scheme be, second year of the Plan. Hence expenditure in that year may be provided to be Rs. 56,000 only. This comes to a total of Rs. 7,31,000 during the entire Plan period. Thus the total recurring cost needed for all the ten universities for the whole Plan will be Rs. 73,10,000.
Summary of Expenditure The following thus gives the broad distribution of expenditure over all the five years of the Plan for all the colleges and universities in the scheme :-
Expenditure in Lakhs of Rupees during the Plan
Item 1961-62 1962-63 1963-64 1964-65 1965-66 Total
Evening Colleges N.R. 2.0 1.0 - - - 3.0
R. 4.5 10.0 14.0 18.0 18.0 64.5
Correspondence N.R.15.0 15.0 - - - 30.0
Courses R. 5.6 15.0 22.5 30.0 73.1
TOTAL 21.5 31.6 29.0 40.5 48.0 170.6
Item-wise, the summary of expenditure on the scheme as a whole
throughout the Third Plan will be:
Rs. lakhs.
Evening Colleges .. .. .. 67.5
Correspondence Courses .. .. .. 103.1
170.6