By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 10, 2018: THE Govt has shortlisted Six Institutions of Eminence (IoEs)  including three from Public Sector and 3 from Private Sector. An Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) in its report recommended selection of six institutions as Institutions of Eminence. The details of these Institutions are as under:

Public Sector: (i) Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka; (ii) Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Maharashtra; and (iii) Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Private Sector: (i) Jio Institute (Reliance Foundation), Pune under Green Field Category; (ii) Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences, Pilani, Rajasthan; and (iii) Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka.

The HRD Minister, Mr Prakash Javadekar, has said that this is a landmark decision and goes far beyond graded autonomy. It will ensure complete autonomy to the selected institutions and facilitate them to grow more rapidly. At the same time, they will get more opportunity to scale up their operations with more skills and quality improvement so that they become World Class Institutions in the field of education, the Minister added.

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 eventually overtime. To achieve the top world ranking, these Institutions shall be provided with greater autonomy  to admit foreign students up to 30% of admitted students; to recruit foreign faculty upto 25% of faculty strength; to offer online courses upto 20% of its programmes; to enter into academic collaboration with top 500 in the world ranking Institutions without permission of UGC; free to fix and charge fees from foreign students without restriction; flexibility of course structure in terms of number of credit hours and years to take a degree; complete flexibility in fixing of curriculum and syllabus, among others.

Each public Institution selected as 'Institution of Eminence' will get financial assistance up to Rs. 1000 Crore over the period of five years under this scheme.

The Finance Minister in his Budget Speech 2016 had announced that "It is our commitment to empower Higher Educational Institutions to help them become world class teaching and research institutions. An enabling regulatory architecture will be provided to ten public and ten private institutions to emerge as world-class Teaching and Research Institutions. This will enhance affordable access to high quality education for ordinary Indians. A detailed scheme will be formulated".