The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday held that universities can’t dilute the standards prescribed by the technical education regulator, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for any courses in colleges but they certainly have the power to stipulate enhanced levels and norms for grant of affiliations. The Supreme Court observed that in present times, no university can afford to have a laid-back attitude when their own performance is being measured by international standards and therefore, the power of the universities to prescribe enhanced norms and standards, cannot be doubted.

 A bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian set aside an order of Kerala High Court and upheld a decision of state-run APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University fixing enhanced norms for affiliation of courses offered by colleges. “In such circumstances, we are of the considered view that the view taken by the Kerala High Court in the impugned judgment issue number 2, is unsustainable. At the cost of repetition, we point out that while universities cannot dilute the standards prescribed by AICTE, they certainly have the power to stipulate enhanced norms and standards,” the bench said.

The bench noted that in today’s times the universities are being ranked according to the quality of standards maintained by them and even the Union Ministry of Education launched an initiative in September 2015, known as National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), for ranking institutions including universities in India. It noted that the ranking is based on certain parameters such as teaching, learning and resources, research and professional practice, graduation outcomes and others.

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