Private academies that train students for entrance exams of the Indian Institutes of Technology and other prestigious engineering colleges mint Rs.100 billion ($2.30 billion) a year – an amount that can fund 30 to 40 new IITs, shows a study by an industry body. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) study, released Wednesday, said private academies who train 600,000 students every year for these exams make Rs.100 billion a year.
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Talking about another anomaly in higher education, the body said that 80,000-90,000 students go abroad for higher studies, leading to a high foreign exchange outflow.
“If quality institutions are provided, a large number of students will stay back and contribute to the nation,†said Assocham.
The chamber asserted that more institutions of excellence should come up and suggested that private players and big industrial groups should be encouraged in higher education.
According to Assocham, India has over 12 million students in higher education but fewer than 350,000 faculty members.
The State Government has so far been provided 1418.10 acre of land to the management of the upcoming Vedanta University near Puri. Out of this 264.27 acre are Government land and the rest 1153.83 acres of land are private land, said Revenue Minister Manmohan Samal.
In response to a question of BJD member Baidhar Mallick, Revenue Minister Samal said 1257 acres of land have been acquired from the 13 mouzas. "Government will acquire another 443.26 acre of government land and 4,288.37 acre of private lands for this purpose," he said. He further informed the House that 707.52 acre of lands and 5545.38 acres of private land private lands are there in the 18 mouza of this area.
A Kashmir news paper mentions this. However, In Orissa there has not been any recent news on the establishment of a DAIICT (Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information & Communication Technology) campus. Last year there was such a proposal as part of a package related to the Anil Ambani group’s investment in Orissa; but that is stalled due to dispute between the Orissa government and a power company partly owned by the Anil Ambani group.
ASBM plans to start an engineering college in the coming year and beyond that dreams of becoming a private university approved by the state. Following are some excerpts of a Business standard report on this.
Bhubaneswar-based Asian School of Business Management (ASBM) is setting up a full-fledged degree engineering college, to be christened ASBM Institute of Technology (ASBMIT), from the next academic session of 2008-09. …
Details of the project is being worked by the Hyderabad based ZCS Consulting Limited. The college building would also be set up by another Hyderabad based construction company – Arunoday Construction.
Alongside, the B-school is also setting up a new Undegraduate (UG) Campus on a 25-acre plot adjoining to its existing campus at Chandaka on the outskirts of the Temple City.
The UG campus would be housing ASBMIT, ASBM School of Information Technology, Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA) discipline and junior college for plus 2 commerce course. …
All the decisions were taken at ASBM’s Board of Governors (BoG) meeting on July 2, 2007.
…, " a total of around Rs 20 crore would be invested in future for setting up the degree engineering college, school of information technology and other courses like BBA and plus 2 commerce".
With the higher education department of the Orissa government already announcing that provisions are being kept in the state for setting up 6 private universities, Pattanayak said, "ASBM’s name figures prominently among them and we are awaiting the government approval".
As for the engineering course, it would have four streams – electronics and telecommunication ( E&TC), electronics and electrical engineering ( E&E), Computer Science and Information Technology ( IT).
During the first academic year 240 students would be admitted to the engineering degree course. The School of Information Technology would be having a 2-year course where the basic focus would be on Information Technology (IT) management. The end view for the school is to get comfortable placements for students in different IT multinationals. ...
The following is from http://www.aicte.ernet.in/approval/MCA/MCA-List.doc (as of July 12 2007) reached via http://www.aicte.ernet.in/app_inst_new.htm after clicking the scrolling sentence in AICTE web page that says “Approval status 2007-08 as on 05-07-2007.”
The last two columns below denote “Existing intake for 2006-07” and “Approved intake for 2007-08.” Please note that they may not be properly aligned. (I am having problems with the editor when copying and pasting from word documents.)
Pioneers reports on a reply in the Orissa state assembly regarding groups interested in setting up of private universities that have contacted the state government. Following are some excerpts.
The State Government on Thursday said the Government has already received proposals to set up six private universities in the State. These universities included the Vedanta University, Ravishankar University, ICFAI University, Barrister Ranjit Mohanty Law University, Amity University and SBM University.
… Higher Education Minister Samir Dey said Government is planning to introduce a bill to regulate the activities of the private universities.
He further said that all the private universities have to arrange the land for setting up their own campus. But in few cases, the State Government will provide lands to the private universities. He further said that 398.811 acres of land has been provided to Utkal University. Similarly, 250 acre of land to Berhampur University, 573.11 acre to Sambalpur University, 80.73 acre to FM University, 98.02 acre to North Orissa University, 1,674 acre to Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology and 100 acres of land have been provided to Jagannath Sanskrit University.
The running headline of Tathya.in says that the Medical Council of India has approved 100 seats for KIMS (Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences), a component of KIIT deemed university. It does not yet show up in the MCI list of MBBS colleges. More details are awaited.
Assuming this is true, the medical college situation in Bhuabaneswar-CTC-Puri area will be as follows:
Its time to convey to the Orissa government that they need to look out for all of Orissa and not just BBSR/CTC/Puri areas.
Following is a draft letter that one can send to the CM (cmo at ori.nic.in) about developing higher education and medical opportunities outside of the BBSR/CTC/Puri area. This is a draft. Please make changes to your liking.
If I missed your favorite location, please add them in your letter.
Sambada reports that T. N. Sheshan will be meeting the CM in regards to the proposed Ravishankar University. The meeting could be about the land issue. The proposed Ravishankar University is supposed to cater 15,000 students and be of international standard. The land identified for this university is in Naraj and there is a speculation that the same land is also the top choice of DAE for NISER. Lets hope that a way out is found so that both DAE/NISER and Shri Shri Ravishankar are happy.
In http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/opinion/09garten.html Yale University’s Dean Jeffrey E. Garten writes about the current plans for a world class university in Nalanda. Following is an excerpt.
The Art of Living Foundation plans a private university in Orissa. Its chief Sri Sri Ravishankar arrived in Bhubaneswar on December 10th 2006 and is expected to sign an MOU with the Orissa government on this university. The location of the university is tentatively identified as Naraj. (Note that NISER is also expected to be located in that area. Also it was earlier mentioned that the proposed National Law University will be located in Naraj.)
