mumbai for millennials pursuing degree programmes may not be as boring as it was hitherto if organic farming interests you as a hobby and you want to learn economics for your bread and butter autonomous colleges offer you exactly this kind of a blend in your degree programmes from something as quirky as learning the secret lives of animals or the changing ways of indians spending their leisure time sociology of leisure or even accommodating credits in accountancy as you pursue engineering citys autonomous colleges offer a plethora of multidisciplinary options for degree college aspirantsjai hind college in south mumbai and mithibai college in the western suburbstwo of the most soughtafter collegeshave joined the limited but elite group of autonomous institutions in the city that includes st xaviers ruia somaiya and others skilloriented curriculum timely results and transfer of credits with ease from any national or international universities are some of the benefits that students can look forward to at these colleges with the formation of the maharashtra autonomous institutions consortium very soon a ruia college student can attend lectures for a selected topic at st xaviers or viceversathe consortium was set up in order to share the best practices and resources in colleges and to make transfer of credits between colleges possible soon the details are yet to be worked out by the consortium but if students want to pursue a semester or two from other universities in india or abroad they can do so we allow transfer of credits from other universities at st xaviers said principal of st xaviers agnelo menezes st xaviers is the oldest autonomy example among traditional arts science and commerce colleges most of the autonomous colleges currently follow the universitys admission process for undergraduate programmesthe newer in the lot jai hind and mithibaiare likely to keep it similar to avoid lastminute confusion but may tweak it a bit in future since ruias autonomy is also a year old they did not change the process last year st xaviers conducts an entrance test for bms and bmm to give equal opportunity to students coming from different backgrounds unlike other traditional coursesrajpal hande principal of mithibai college said that they do not intend to introduce new courses in the first year of autonomy but will restructure and revamp all the firstyear courses we will be using the courses offered by top institutes in the country as benchmarks ten shortterm addon courses are to be started for students of specific departments our aim is to create joboriented and skillbased curriculum ensuring that our graduates are jobready said hande he added that international collaborations are also in the pipeline ashok wadia principal of jai hind college said that they would be changing their examination and evaluation processes and will incorporate continuous assessment there will also be components and grades for extracurricular and social responsibility activities taken up by studentsthese changes will be implemented for the coming year and the incoming batch will receive the benefits we wish