Proposed Jio institute gets notability status with IITs and IISc

Monday, 9th July 2018, the government awarded Institution of Eminence (IoE) status to three public and three private institutions — IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), BITS-Pilani, Manipal Academy of High Education, and Reliance Foundation’s proposed Jio Institute near Navi Mumbai.

Soon the government’s formal notification is expected regarding the University Grant Commission (UGC) approved six names against the promised 20 slots.

In August, 2017 Union Cabinet had approved UGC’s ‘Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities Regulations 2017.’ Since the country has little representation in the international ranking of educational institutions the regulations are aimed at creating an enabling architecture for 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world-class institutions.

Currently only higher education institutions are placed in the top 500 of global rankings or top 50 of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) which are eligible to apply for the eminence tag. Provided the sponsoring organisation submits a convincing perspective plan for 15 years even private IoEs can also come up as greenfield ventures.

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The IoEs are proposed to have greater autonomy compared to other higher education institutions. For example, they will be free to decide their fee for domestic and foreign students, and have a flexible course duration and structure.

Well, their academic collaborations with foreign institutions will be exempt from approvals of government or UGC except institutions based on a list of negative countries prepared by the External Affairs and Home ministries.

Once identified, the target for the IoEs would be to break into the top 500 in at least one internationally reputed ranking framework in 10 years and come up in the top 100 over time.

In addition to autonomy, the 10 government institutions will get Rs 1,000 crore each from the HRD Ministry to achieve world-class status. The government will offer no financial assistance to the private institutions.

A total of 114 institutions and universities – 74 from public sector and 40 from private sector – had applied for IoE status. Out of these, 11 are central universities, 27 are state universities, 10 are state private universities and the remaining are institutes of national importance (INIs), deemed universities, stand-alone institutions and organisations that intend to establish universities.

For now, the Empowered Expert Committee (EEC), which was entrusted to find 20 institutions out of 114 applicants, could only identify 11, of which six have been awarded the eminence tag.

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