The University Grants Commission (UGC) on Friday announced IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Delhi University, University of Hyderabad, Amritha Vishwa Vidyapeetham and VIT among other 14 institutions, out of the 24 recommended by the Government’s Empowered Expert Committee (EEC), selected for Institute of Eminence (IoE) status. Seven public universities and seven private ones also received similar letters issued by the UGC on Friday.
UGC picked IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Delhi University, Central University of Hyderabad, Jadavpur University (Kolkata), Anna University and Banaras Hindu University under the public institutions’ category. This is in addition to IIT Delhi, IIT-Bombay and IISc Bangalore already announced last year.
A university that Satya Bharti Foundation (associated with telecom major Bharti Airtel) plans to build in Delhi has become the second Greenfield, work-in-progress institution after Reliance Foundation’s Jio University to receive a letter of intent recommending it as an Institute of Eminence (IoE). This is in addition to BITS-Pilani, Manipal Academy of Higher Education and Reliance Foundation’s yet-to-be-established Jio Institute announced last year.
However, the five private universities category – Azim Premji University (Bengaluru), Ashoka University (Sonepat), KREA University – Chennai (which has former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan on its board), Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bengaluru) and the Indian Institute of Public Health (Gandhinagar) are denied the tag to on the grounds that they have not been placed in any global or national rankings.
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Under the private category, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Bengaluru), VIT Vellore, Jamia Hamdard (New Delhi), Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT Bhubaneswar), O P Jindal University (Sonepat) and Shiv Nadar University (Greater Noida) will be awarded IoE status.
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Savitribai Phule Pune University, Tezpur University, Panjab University and Andhra University are among those that failed to make the cut.
The UGC ranked the institutions as per QS-2020 World Rankings. Wherever there is a tie, it used the National Institutional Ranking Framework as a tie-breaker. With Friday’s announcement, the total number of universities and institutes selected for the eminence tag has gone up to 20, of which 10 are public institutions and 10 private. The UGC’s recommendations will now be submitted to the Ministry for final grant of the status.
The Union Cabinet under Prime Minister Narendra Modi had approved UGC’s ‘Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities Regulations 2017’ in August 2017. Initially, in July 2018 the Gopalaswami panel initially recommended 11 institutions for the Institutions of Eminence tag. The Centre had then accepted six recommendations — IITs Delhi and Bombay, IISc Bangalore, BITS Pilani, Manipal University, and the yet-to-open Jio University.
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The Institute of Eminence scheme aimed at creating an enabling architecture for 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world-class institutions to put India on the global Education map. Currently, the country has little representation in the international educational institutions ranking. The private IoEs can also come up as greenfield ventures, provided the sponsoring organisation submits a convincing perspective plan for 15 years.
The selected IoEs are proposed to have greater autonomy and independence to decide the academic fee of the courses, have flexible course duration, faculty hiring and also in the governance structure. The public institutions will also receive a government grant of Rs 1,000 crore over 5 years to improve the quality, infrastructure and research while the private institutions will not get any funding under the scheme.
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