Panel Clears 19 More Institutes For Eminence Tag; DU, JU In The List

THE EMPOWERED Expert Committee (EEC) on Friday identified 19 more contenders for the status of Institutions of Eminence (IoE). With this, the total number of universities and institutes recommended by EEC for the eminence tag has gone up to 30, of which six — three public and three private — have been officially announced by the government.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) is expected to meet to select another 14 next week. The EEC’s latest recommendation includes two more greenfield institutions like Reliance’s Jio University — Satya Bharti University backed by Satya Bharti Foundation of Bharti Airtel group and Krea University in Andhra Pradesh.

That apart, under the private category, the EEC has suggested the names of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in Coimbatore, VIT in Vellore, Jamia Hamdard University in New Delhi, Shiv Nadar University, Azim Premji University, Ashoka University, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Bhubaneswar, OP Jindal Global University, Indian Institute for Human Settlements and Institute of Public Health Sciences in Telangana.

Under the public category, Banaras Hindu University, Tezpur University, Savitribai Phule Pune University, University of Hyderabad, Aligarh Muslim University, Panjab University and Andhra University are in the fray to be selected as IoEs.

These are in addition to the 11 institutes recommended by the EEC in July this year. Of them, only IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IISc Bangalore, BITS Pilani, Manipal University and Jio University have bagged the IoE status. The remaining — IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Jadavpur University, Delhi University and Anna University — are expected to be awarded the status next week, along with another nine out of the 19 recommendations made by EEC on Friday.

While the committee has urged the government to award the eminence tag to all 30 of its suggestions, sources in the HRD Ministry told The Indian Express that the government’s priority is to first complete the selection of 20 IoEs, as passed by the Union Cabinet.

The Union Cabinet had approved UGC’s ‘Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities Regulations 2017’, in August 2017. The regulations are aimed at creating an enabling architecture for 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world-class institutions, since the country has little representation in the international ranking of educational institutions.

The private IoEs can also come up as greenfield ventures, provided the sponsoring organisation submits a convincing perspective plan for 15 years.

The IoEs are proposed to have greater autonomy compared to other higher education institutions. For instance, they will be free to decide their fee for domestic and foreign students, and have a flexible course duration and structure.

The 10 government institutions, in addition to autonomy, will also get Rs 1,000 crore each from the HRD Ministry to achieve world-class status. The government will offer no financial assistance to the private institutions.

The announcement of the first six IoEs had snowballed into a political controversy with the Opposition objecting to the choice of a yet-to-be-established institution — Reliance Foundation’s Jio University.

(Source: TheIndianExpress Education)