The designation of universities as “Institute of Eminence” has been marred with controversies and irrationality in approach.
This has made the entire “higher education reform process” look like a big sham and has clearly eroded the credibility of the initiative.
What does “Institutes of Eminence” (IoE) mean?
What - As part of the higher education reforms that is being advanced, “IoE” was proposed to be granted for some well performing universities.
The idea was to give these select institutions greater autonomy and support, which will enable them reach a world class status.
74 public universities and 29 private universities applied for this converted status and a committee was constituted to consider the applications.
Three public and three private universities were ultimately awarded IoE status based on considerations like – financial stability, research excellence and good & independent governance.
Fallouts - Significantly, many deserving ‘established private institutions’ and ‘visionary Greenfield universities’ didn’t make the cut.
In this context, the grant of IoE status to the proposed Reliance’s Jio University even before its establishment has raised many eyebrows.
Among the many surprises, IIT Madras {ranked 2nd under HRD Ministry’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF)} also didn’t get the tag.
What are the financial aspects related to the conferment of IoE tag?
For private universities, the IoE tag merely means greater autonomy for university boards and there is no promise of government’s financial support.
For the three public IoEs, the government plans to give Rs. 1000 crores over five years to help them upgrade their standards to world-class levels.
This means, an annual budgetary allocation of Rs. 200 crores for each of these institutions, which is woefully inadequate for the task envisioned.
Notably, the top 10 universities of the world spend about 6000 crores on an average for research work alone.
Overall, top ten universities net an average endowment fund of over Rs. 1,24,000 crore each annually to sustain their operations.
In this context, even our private universities are painfully underfunded with just about Rs. 5000 crores being
What are the other concerns?
The committee for conferring IoE tag recommended 8 public universities for the same, but the government approved only 3.
Notably, the government hasn’t explained the rationale for this.
Also, as there is no financial commitment for private universities, there is no reason for denying some deserving universities the coveted status.
Hence, it can be said that the government’s urge to control has overtaken the need to usher in excellence by granting more autonomy.
