Govt will groom 20 universities as ‘institutions of eminence’

New Delhi: Aiming to push the best of Indian higher education institutions into the elite list of top 100 world institutes, the Centre with the help of Niti Aayog has prepared a blueprint to pick and groom 20 Indian universities as ‘Institutions of Eminence’ which will have to break into the exclusive club of global varsities within five years of their getting the aforementioned tag.

However the rider is that any institution failing to do so will lose the coveted status and all privileges attached to it will also be taken away.

Highly placed sources said that while the government is willing to give these institutes of eminence as much autonomy as possible, there would be zero tolerance in terms of their violating any terms of the guidelines prepared by Niti Aayog and Union human resources development (HRD) ministry. Any deviation from the rules will lead to snatching away of the tag from the erring varsity and all the freedom given to it as an autonomous institution will too be taken away, they added.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had begun the initiative of bringing greater number of Indian institutions in the field of higher education within the fold of top 100 global varsities. Subsequently,  the HRD ministry with the help of Niti Aayog had begun the process of finalising the guidelines for picking the institutions of eminence.

The HRD ministry notified the blueprint or rather the guidelines for the purpose in September this year, titled ‘The UGC (Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities) regulations, 2017’, and it received 100 applications from both state-run as well as private varsities from across the country till December 12, which was the last date for application.

The empowered expert committee (EEC) of the HRD ministry will now select 20 varsities from these applicants to be upgraded as institutions of eminence. These would be given greater autonomy by the Centre in terms of choosing foreign faculty as well as students and fix and charge fees from them without restrictions from the University Grants Commission (UGC, the apex body governing universities in the country).

Top sources privy to development said that these selected institutions will have to break into the global list of top 100 varsities within five years of their becoming centres of eminence.

All the seven IITs are learnt to have applied for the coveted status, sources informed.

As per the guidelines, the institutions of eminence shall continue to be ranked in the National lnstitutional Ranking Framework, but within five years of notification, these will have to get themselves ranked in an international ranking index of repute. lt should from then on continue to be ranked in the national and international ranking frameworks.