Calcutta University (CU) has left it to its affiliated colleges to decide how they want to screen students for postgraduate programmes.
Till last year, the university would centrally regulate the admission process.
From marks-based admission to fixing the admission calendar, everything would be decided by the university.
"The university has now left it to the colleges to decide how they will admit students and what their admission calendar will be. If a college wants to screen students for its PG programme based on admission tests, it's free to do so," CU vice-chancellor Ashutosh Ghosh said.
On Friday, Calcutta University announced that postgraduate entrants exiting after the third year will be evaluated through a 50:50 weightage of entrance exam scores and performance up to the sixth semester.
"Colleges, too, should have the liberty to decide," the VC said.
CU-affiliated colleges, which enjoyed autonomy at the postgraduate level till 2018, had long been demanding that the right to admit students at the master's level and the admission calendar be left to the colleges.
Earlier, Lady Brabourne College had informed the university that it wanted to admit PG students from other colleges through admission tests or interviews.
"If the colleges are allowed to screen students on their own, a practice that existed till 2018, it will help us get bright students. Apart from this, we would want the university to heed our suggestions while drawing the PG syllabus and evaluation of the answer scripts," Lady Brabourne principal Siuli Sarkar said.
The college will admit its own students graduating with a major this year — after completing the three-year undergraduate programme — to postgraduate courses solely on their marks.
Explaining the need to introduce admission tests or interviews for students from other colleges, Sarkar said: "We do not know anything about their standards, so it's better to have some screening parameters."
Calcutta University has said it would set aside 80% of its postgraduate seats for undergraduate students who exit college after the third year.
Principal Sarkar said they would announce later how seats would be apportioned.
Until 2018, PG colleges had the autonomy to draw their own syllabus and evaluate answer scripts independently.
Manas Kabi, the principal of Asutosh College, said the university's centralised system delayed PG admissions.
"Many students did not take admission because of this delay, and our postgraduate seats remained vacant. Leaving the postgraduate admission to the colleges was our long-standing demand," the principal said.
Like Lady Brabourne, Asutosh is also likely to apply two different methods — one for its own students and another for those from other colleges.
"We might introduce admission tests or interviews for students from other colleges if the departments so desire," principal Kabi said.
According to Calcutta University sources, the full autonomy granted to affiliated colleges running postgraduate programmes in the early 2000s was withdrawn after 2018 due to alleged misuse of power by some institutions.
CU registrar Debasis Das earlier told Metro that some colleges manipulated evaluations so their students scored exceptionally high marks, and admitted students beyond their sanctioned strength.