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A
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| What does the present government wants to do? |
- The Prime Minister on Monday reiterated his government’s intention to set up 20 world-class universities this year. The idea is to bring about qualitative improvement in the standards of education — currently India has virtually no representation in international rankings of educational institutions.
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| So what’s the plan? |
- The government will identify 10 government and 10 private universities and help them achieve “world-class standards”. According to the HRD Ministry’s concept note submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office, these universities will have
- A corpus of at least Rs 1,000 crore
* A place in the top 500 in any renowned ranking system
* Accreditation by a reputed international agency
* Faculty-student ratio not less than 1:10 over 3 years of establishment
* Excellent laboratory facilities and cutting edge research
* A good mix of domestic and foreign students
* A good proportion of foreign or foreign-qualified faculty
* Teaching and research collaborations with reputed international universities
* At least two publications in each discipline in a reputed peer-reviewed journal every year
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| Is all of this new? |
- Not really. The proposal is quite similar to UPA’s Universities for Research and Innovation Bill, 2012, which too sought to create a separate category of universities with autonomy to determine their own standards and decide on matters like faculty hiring and salaries, curriculum, fees, etc.
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| Are there any problems? |
- Details of the proposal are not public, and have not been analysed threadbare. Allowing private players to set up entirely new institutions as world-class universities could be seen as an attempt to give big private interests easy passage into the education sector with little monitoring, and without the obligation of adhering to government regulations. The proposal is silent on whether foreign education providers can use this route to enter India and set up campuses here.
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| What happens now? |
- A law can be brought by Parliament, or such institutions can be declared deemed universities. Should the HRD Ministry choose the deemed university route, the University Grants Commission will have to amend its deemed university regulations.
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