NEW DELHI: Government-run IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore were granted the status of “institution of eminence” along with three private players on Monday giving them complete freedom to run their academic and research programmes in a manner which would help make them among the best in the world.
The private institutes which were also granted the status are BITS-Pilani, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal and
Jio Institute of Reliance Foundation, Greater Mumbai. A senior
HRD official said that another list will be announced soon.
These institutions are now completely free from the regulations of the University Grants Commission.
While the government set a number of maximum 20 institutions (10 government and 10 private) to be given the status, the empowered experts committee (EEC) were not convinced by the 113 institutions’ application/ vision statement to offer them the status and thus forwarded lesser number of names to the government.
Among the private players, while MAHE and BITS-Pilani are well established institutions with Manipal celebrating its 25th year, the Reliance Foundation’s institution has been shortlisted under the “Greenfield” category, whose vision statement started with “to be the youngest global top 100 universities.”
In all 114 institutions (both public and private) applied after the government announced its decision to accord the status to 20 institutions. A great deal of autonomy is accorded with the status and the government institutions will get multi-crore state funding as well.
Along with the tag comes the responsibility to secure a place among the top 500 in a renowned global university ranking framework in the first 10 years after the status is conferred and then eventually be among the top 100. However, the chosen government institutions will now vie for the top 100 as they are already among the top 200 in one or the other global university rankings.
V Ramgopal Rao, director, IIT-Delhi said: “We are already in the top 200. In our proposal we forwarded our strategy to be in the top league globally through three ‘I’s, -- international linkages such as recruiting foreign faculty and students who are of non-Indian origin, industry linkages and interdisciplinary research. In the interdisciplinary research we want to set up inter-disciplinary teams and also to ensure that whatever we do will help the society,” adding that the funding or “the additional grants would help us create the infrastructure and bring our infrastructure to the international level.”
Of the 114 institutions, EEC found 113 eligible and of that it forwarded less than 20 names to the government. Head of the EEX, former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami said: “We sent more than six names to the government. However, we sent only three private institution names and the number of government institutions were more. But the government to keep a parity chose three each, which is fine.”
While no disclosing the exact number the committee recommended to the government, Gopalaswami said that the other institutions had gaps in different areas that needs to be plugged to be considered for the eminence status and which is the reason the EEC could not recommend 20. “In any case the government set 20 as the upper limit and not mandatory,” added Gopalaswami.
The big plus that comes with the tag is that these institutions are free of all UGC regulations, they can enrol upto 30% foreign students, are free to fix fees, for both domestic and foreign students as per internal policies, and would be exempted from any fee regulations which may be there in force.
Besides, they shall have the freedom to offer courses within a programme, as well as to offer degrees in newer areas, after approval of its governing council without consulting the UGC. They will also have complete flexibility in fixing of curriculum and syllabus, with no UGC mandated curriculum structure and have the freedom to offer online courses as part of its programmes (subject to a limit of 20% of any programme) and may recruit faculty from India and abroad with complete autonomy in the appointment of faculty, promotions etc.
The greenfield category is for those with a “a completely new proposal to establish an institution of eminence deemed to be university” and the “sponsoring organisation for the greenfield institution should have members whose total net worth is at least rupees five thousand crore collectively.”