HRD Ministry grants ‘Institution of Eminence’ status to 3 public, 3 private colleges, including Jio Institute (Reliance Foundation)
A non-existent educational institute with not even a brick on the ground has found a place among the coveted list of “Institution of Eminence”, triggering a major controversy.
Human Resource Minister Prakash Javadekar, who is now in Canada, on Monday tweeted the list of six such “Institution of Eminence”, three each from private and public sectors. Yet to be born, Jio Institute, which is controlled by Reliance Foundation, is one of them.
While it takes decades for an institute to acquire any such ranking, Jio Institute, listed first in the category of private institutes, has been awarded such distinction by the Government even though nothing is known about its location or status. The HRD Ministry is trying to justify that the proposed institute falls in an unprecedented category “Greenfield” institute.
The Government granted “Institution of Eminence” (IoE) status to IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay and Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in the public sector, and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, BITS Pilani and Jio Institute by Reliance Foundation in the private sector.
Cherished as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream project to develop world class institutes in India, the IoEs is slated to get greater autonomy to start new courses, admit foreign students, hire foreign faculty, and collaborate with foreign educational institutions without the need for Government approval.
The move is part of a scheme of the HRD Ministry to select 20 IoEs — 10 public and 10 private — that will enjoy complete academic and administrative autonomy
Ever since Javadekar twitted about Jio Institute an eminent institution, the social media trend began and on Twitter many users tagging the HRD Minister asked him about the institute’s location and credentials and some even asked whether it is better than prominent IITs or fall in the leagues of any global ranking.
The Pioneer investigations later confirmed that Jio Institute doesn’t have any campus or a website and it is yet to be established about which the NDA Government initiated to market it as a world-class institution.
As many as 114 institutes had applied for the IoE tag to enable them to get full autonomy and special incentives to project them as “world class universities”. These include 11 Central universities, 27 ‘institutes of national importance’, top IITs and NITs, 27 State universities, 10 private universities.
While the HRD Ministry will grant Rs 1,000 crore funds to the three public institutions in the next five years, the private institutes will not be eligible for Government funding.
Top corporates are also competing for the private institutes’ category with the Reliance Group applying for the Reliance Foundation Institution & Research in Maharshtra, Airtel for Bharti University (Satya Bharti Foundation) in Delhi, and Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta University in Odisha. KREA University which has former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan as its adviser, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Indus Tech University in Delhi and Acharya Institutes of Bangalore were among other applicants.
This is the third major “achievement” Javadekar announced in a week time. The first was announcement of HEFA replacing UGC and the second was declaration that all examinations, like JEE, NEET and NET, would to be conducted online from next academic session through a newly formed Government agency, National Testing Agency (NTA).
For the Monday’s announcement, the Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) headed by former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami picked six institutions that, according to the panel, showed the potential to find a place among top 500 of global rankings.
“The #InstituteofEminence are important for the country. We have 800 universities, but not a single university in top 100 or even 200 in the world ranking. Today’s decision will help achieve this. Improving ranking needs sustained planning, complete freedom & public institutes getting public funding (sic),” Javadekar tweeted.
“This decision is a landmark decision for following reasons— This was never thought off & tried; it is more than a graded autonomy, it is really a full autonomy to the institutes; the institutes can take their own decisions (sic),” he added.
Following the controversy, the HRD Ministry issued a Press statement saying an Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) in its report recommended selection of six institutions (3 from public sector and 3 from private sector) as Institutions of Eminence.
The Ministry statement said it is expected that the above selected Institutions will come up in top 500 of the world ranking in 10 years and in top 100 of the world ranking eventuallyovertime.