COIMBATORE: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has come up with a new regulation for declaring government educational institutions as Institutions of Eminence (IoE), which would provide enabling regulatory architecture to 10 public and private higher education institutions each to emerge as world class centres for teaching and research.
It should be noted that Finance Minister in his Budget speech in 2016 announced that an ‘enabling regulatory architecture’ would be provided to 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world-class teaching and research institutions to make access to high quality education for ordinary Indians affordable.
These 10 institutions, which were under the government owned and controlled category, would be a mix of technical, management, arts institutions and central universities. They should figure in the top 50 ranking list in their category under the latest National Institutional Ranking Framework.
Eligible institutions have to apply to the UGC with a 15 years strategic vision plan as well as a five year implementation plan, along with a SWOT analysis, focusing on their present status in the quality hierarchy and the proposed measures to address shortcomings. Based on the recommendation of the Empowered Expert Committee and UGC, the Ministry of Human Resource Development would select institutions under the scheme.
The selected institutions will get an assistance up to `1,000 crore or 50 to 75 per cent of the requirement projected in the perspective and detailed plans submitted by the institutions. Apart from this, the Institutions of Eminence would be free to admit foreign students on merit subject to a maximum of 30 per cent of the strength of admitted domestic students.
Expectations from the government Institutions of Eminence includes: they should preferably be multi-disciplinary and have both teaching and research focus of an exceptionally high quality, should offer various inter-disciplinary courses, should have a good proportion of foreign or foreign qualified faculty, faculty-student ratio of not less than 1:20 and it has to be increased to 1:10 after five years of getting the IoE tag.