We need a separate grant for humanities: Arun Kumar Grover

Interview with Vice-Chancellor, Panjab University

Panjab University beat Indian Institutes of Technology to the top slot among Indian universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Vice-Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover, in an interview with Komal Amit Gera, talks about the factors behind its success and his vision for the university. Edited excerpts:

What were the prime factors behind Panjab University’s high ranking in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings?

Research output at the university has been commendable. We have international collaborations for research in physical sciences.

We also encourage inter-disciplinary research in fields such as pharmacy, chemistry, physics and other pure sciences.

Moreover, our departments are strong in linguistics. A few years ago, the university was ranked 380 in some other ratings.

This time, it is a better experience.

It is felt higher grants by the University Grants Commission (UGC) have facilitated research. Is that the main driver of your success?

The university has an annual budget of Rs 400 crore and 87 per cent of this goes into salaries. So, we certainly need more grants. In the last three years, we received a purse grant of Rs 10 crore a year, but couldn’t avail of the last annual grant of Rs 10 crore due to some technical reason.

To improve research equipment, we have been approved a grant of Rs 34.8 crore in January 2014, for three and a half years.

We need a separate grant for humanities departments.

What is your vision for the university?

To maintain the benchmark, we definitely need to improve the performance. In developed countries, research programmes are initiated at the bachelor’s level. We are planning to implement a similar pattern and offer an integrated bachelor’s-master’s-doctorate programme. As of now, the integrated programme prescribed by UGC has to be upgraded.