Six colleges set to get Institutes of Excellence status, incentives

NEWDELHI: The University Grants Commission (UGC) is likely to take up the proposal of approving on Monday the names of six educational institutes that will be designated Institutes of Excellence (IoEs), entitling them to special incentives.

The move is part of a scheme of the human resource development (HRD) ministry to select 20 IoEs — 10 public institutions and 10 private — that will enjoy complete academic and administrative autonomy. The 10 government ones would also receive special funding.

According to persons familiar with the development, only three government and three private institutes are likely to be announced on Monday, including two leading Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), a university to be set up by Reliance Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Reliance Industries, and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. Existing, new, and even private universities at the conceptual stage were eligible to apply. “The committee that was tasked with the job of selecting the institutes has zeroed in on six institutes and it will be tabled in the meeting on Monday for clearance,” said a senior UGC official who asked not to be identified. It was in 2016 that the government announced plans to create IoEs.

A number of India’s bestknown universities and colleges, including Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, most of the top IITs and a number of state universities applied under the scheme.

The private institutes will not be eligible for government funding. UGC notified the UGC (Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2017, for private institutions and UGC (Declaration of Government Educational Institutions as Institutions of Eminence) Guidelines, 2017, for public ones.

Former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami was appointed chairperson of the empowered expert committee (EEC) to select the institutes.

Unlike other institutions, institutes with the status of eminence will get greater autonomy to start new courses, admit foreign students, hire foreign faculty, and collaborate with foreign educational institutions without the need for government approval.

The government will invest Rs10,000 crore over the next few years in the public higher education institutions approved under the scheme.

“The selection of Institutions of Eminence will not only improve the quality of education but also propel competition in the entire education sector,” human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar had said earlier.

Government institutions ranked among the top 50 by the HRD ministry in their respective categories, such as engineering, general universities or management institutes, were eligible to apply for the status.