pune a lack of understanding of the concept of autonomy at various levels including universities state and regulatory bodies remains the biggest hurdle in efforts to promote autonomy among colleges said academicians at a daylong meet on advantages of autonomy for colleges here on wednesday the speakers called for steps like a uniform policy for simultaneous implementation of the autonomy scheme at universities across the state and for setting up an independent cell at the university level with competent wellinformed persons for implementation of the scheme the meet was organised by the progressive education societys pes modern college of computer and business studies with a view to bring about sharing of experience by representatives of colleges which have gone autonomous and those who are planning to go autonomous autonomy primarily relates to academic freedom for an institution in determining the syllabi courses exams and related reforms like credit and grading systems etc of its own such freedom is otherwise difficult to exercise under the conventional university regime where any change in academic matters has to go through a chain of statutory bodies like academic and management councils senate and chancellors office the idea is also to minimise the excessive dependence of the colleges on universities and the state grants according to pes chairman gajanan ekbote the university grants commission ugc has set a target of getting at least 10 per cent of the eligible colleges in the country converted into autonomous institutions however compared to southern states like kerala andhra pradesh karnataka and tamil nadu where the scheme has been received well states like maharashtra which has nearly 3000 colleges were way behind he saidfor instance only four of the 530odd colleges in the uop area which covers pune ahmednagar and nashik districts have become autonomous so far this includes two engineering institutions college of engineering pune and vishwakarma institute of technology vit a management institute indsearch and an arts science commerce college st miras ekbote said concerns among college employees about a change in their service conditions in case their institution goes autonomous are misplaced the state governments circular of february 14 2005 issued at the behest of the governor is quite clear that there will be no reduction in the salary grants to autonomous institutions pandit vidyasagar director of the university of punes board of college and university development called for a change in the mindset at all levels to understand and encourage autonomy he said apprehensions about college managements losing control over the institution or teachers losing their jobs were misplaced considering the good experience of those colleges which preferred autonomy flexibility in approach is the biggest advantage of autonomy he said and added the institutions ought to be disciplined and totally noncomplacent in responding to the changes in order to survive as an autonomous establishmentsharing his experience as head of an autonomous college indsearch director ashok joshi said there arent many problems as far as internal operations of an autonomous institution are concerned but there are