In its first attempt at imbibing a culture of infrastructure-sharing among educational institutions, the University Grants Commission (UGC) began on Monday an exercise to group eight undergraduate colleges affiliated to Calcutta University (CU) under its ?cluster colleges? scheme.

The institutions include APC College, Birati College, Sarojini Naidu College and Rashtraguru Surendranath College.

The eight colleges are among the very few institutions in the entire country that had agreed to come under the UGC?s proposed scheme.

The UGC had recently directed universities registered under it to ask colleges affiliated to them whether they agreed to be covered under its new concept of ?cluster colleges?.

The scheme is aimed at encouraging colleges to tie up in academic programmes.

The colleges, however, will be able to get funds from the UGC for infrastructural development only if they agree to share their facilities with other colleges.

?We are happy that Calcutta has taken the lead in helping the UGC implement its new concept of cluster colleges. As the concept is still in a preliminary stage, it is not compulsory for all colleges to join the scheme. But all colleges may have to come under it once we complete framing a concrete set of guidelines on this score,? V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, UGC vice-chairman told Metro from Delhi.

?This concept of sharing infrastructure has yielded wonderful results wherever it has been introduced in other parts of the world. It can help universities in our own country as well, if implemented in the appropriate way,? Pillai added.

After examining their infrastructure, each of the eight colleges will be given a questionnaire.

UGC?s inspection reports and the information revealed in the questionnaire will be used as the basis for framing the guidelines.

A brainstorming session, to chalk out the modalities and the guidelines of the scheme, was held in Calcutta last week. It was attended by Pillai and senior state government officials, including Subimal Sen, vice-chairman, West Bengal Council for Higher Education, Jawhar Sirkar, principal secretary, state higher education department, Suranjan Das, pro vice-chancellor (academic affairs), Calcutta University and Ratnabali Banerjee, regional officer of UGC?s office in Calcutta.

Officials said the primary aim of the scheme is to reduce government expenditure on infrastructure development of undergraduate colleges.