Government Declares 6 Educational ‘Institutions of Eminence’

• 10 Jul 2018

The Government has shortlisted Six Institutions of Eminence (IoEs) including 3 from Public Sector and 3 from Private Sector. Each public Institution selected as ‘Institution of Eminence’ will get financial assistance up to Rs. 1000 Crore over the period of five years under this scheme. The government has also made it clear that it will offer no financial assistance to the private institutions under this scheme, though they will get autonomy to pursue academic excellence.

• Public Sector: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka; Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Maharashtra; and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
• Private Sector: Jio Institute (Reliance Foundation), Pune under Green Field Category; Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences, Pilani, Rajasthan; and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka.

NOTE: The term greenfield was originally used in construction and development to reference land that has never been used, where there was no need to demolish or rebuild any existing structures. The term greenfield project’ generally refers to the initiation of a project without the need to consider any prior work. In contrast to this, the term brownfield project refers to the project based on prior work or to rebuild (engineer) a product from an existing one.

Background

The move is a part of government’s scheme to provide the regulatory architecture for setting up or upgrading of 20 Institutions (10 from public sector & 10 from the private sector) as a world-class teaching and research institutions called as ‘Institutions of Eminence’.

Key points

• This will ensure complete autonomy to the selected institutions and help them grow more rapidly.
• The institutions will get more opportunity to scale up their operations with more skills and quality improvement so that they become World Class Institutions in the field of education.
• It is expected that the above-selected Institutions will figure in the top 500 list of the major global rankings within 10 years and in top 100 of the world ranking eventually over time.
• To achieve top global rankings, these Institutions shall be provided with greater autonomy to admit foreign students to 30% of admitted students.
• The institutions can also recruit foreign faculty up to 25% of faculty strength and offer online courses up to 20% of its programmes.
• The institutions can enter into academic collaboration with other top 500 rankers in the world ranking Institutions without permission of UGC.
• The institutions will be free to fix and charge fees from foreign students without restriction.
• They will have the flexibility to design course structure in terms of a number of credit hours and years to take a degree.