NEW DELHI:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai,
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, PepsiCo CEO
Indra Nooyi, New Development Bank chairman K V Kamath and chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian could be part of a panel to choose India's 20 world class 'Institutes of Eminence'.
Five such experts will ultimately be part of the empowered expert committee (EEC) which will announce the names of the 10 public and 10 private higher education institutions which will be granted the premier status from the 2018-19 academic session.
According to sources in the ministry, the cabinet secretary chaired a meeting on Tuesday which shortlisted 36 names for the EEC. The term for the members of the committee is three years.
Other top names in this shortlist include Sanjeev Sanyal, principal economic adviser; Prof P Balaram, former director of IISc, Bangalore; former Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya; Prof Deepak Nayyar, former VC, DU; and former RBI governor D Subbarao. The EEC will forward a list of 20 names to the University Grants Commission. Apart from selecting the final 20 names, the committee will also assess the progress of these institutions. In all 100 institutions applied for the status which includes premier institutions like IITs, IISc and universities like Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, among others.
Unlike other universities in the country, these institutions will have the liberty to enrol up to 30% foreign students. Moreover, selected public institutions will be able to recruit up to 25% foreign faculty, while there will be no such limit for selected private institutions. The universities will have the freedom of devising their own courses, create centres without coming to UGC, fix their own fee structure, but with a 'need blind' mechanism so that the best students are not denied education for fund crunch.
