14 World class universities in India: Guidelines being formulated, States to compete
November 18th, 2007
Following is an excerpt from a report on this in Economic Times.
NEW DELHI: With a thrust on improving the standard of higher education, government is working on a proposal to set up 14 ‘World Class Universities’ across the country at an early date.
A blueprint is being prepared by the Human Resources Development (HRD) Ministry and Planning Commission to set out the criteria for such universities, which will have a business management school, an engineering college, a medical college, a law college in a single campus.
The proposal is being pursued by the Prime Minister’s office which has asked the HRD Ministry and Planning Commission to expedite formulation of guidelines for such universities and give the final picture by the third week of this month.
… The HRD Ministry and Planning Commission have started working on these guidelines acting on the proposal of full Planning Commission meeting on education sector that held on September 13.
"We are working at a very fast pace on the guidelines because we have already been told once by the PMO that we are behind the schedule. So soon we will have the guidelines in place," said Mungekar, former Vice Chancellor of Mumbai University.
… Proposals for setting up the ‘World Class Universities’ will be invited from all the states and those meeting the criteria will benefit. This will, in effect, do away with allegations of discrimination by states.
"The rules are going to be very stringent. The states have to compete to get the world class university," Mungekar said while giving an outline of the regulations.
Besides reasonable rules like a big plot of a land for free in prime location, there would be other demanding criteria that the states will have to meet while competing for having such universities.
In the allotment of such centrally-funded universities, priority will be given to states which do not have central varsities at present.
Orissa must get ready to prepare and send a good proposal on this. After the criteria is announced there may not be much time to do this. So preparing for this beforehand is important.
Entry Filed under: Eleventh plan,Universities of Innovation
1 Writeup
1. Sandip | November 19th, 2007 at 3:34 am
“So preparing for this beforehand is important.”
I can’t agree more with you. This is our people who are in central secretariat and other GOI offices will come handy. If they tip us off as to the documents as they are being prepared we can have input of the civil society to the CMO office and we will be prepared.
A group in Delhi is very important in this regard. I am told that a group of officers from Bihar are helping Bihar enormously, though not visible on the surface. Such cadre of volunteers in Delhi, independent, low profile information collectors, will be highly useful in such preparation, because they will provide a lead to information by a couple of weeks and thus, provide more time to prepare .