Expert panel to select educational 'Institutions of Eminence'

An empowered expert committee has been constituted to select 'Institutions of Eminence' from the private and public teaching institutions.

This information was given by Minister of State (HRD) Dr. Satya Pal Singh on Monday in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question.

Former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami is the Chairman of the committee that has been constituted on the notification of the University Grants Commission (UGC).

The other members of the committee are: Professor Tarun Khanna, Director of South Asia Institute at Harvard University; Renu Khator, President of University of Houston; and Pritam Singh, former Director of IIM Lucknow.

The UGC has issued / notified enabling regulatory architecture in the form of UGC (Declaration of Govt. Educational Institutions as Institutions of Eminence) Guidelines, 2017 and UGC (Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2017 to enable 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world class teaching and research institutions named as 'Institutions of Eminence' (IoEs).

The committee will select top ten public and top ten private IoEs among 114 applicants.

"The selected IoEs will have freedom to fix and charge fee from foreign students without restriction and would have the freedom to determine the domestic students' fees, subject to the condition that no student who gains admission should be turned away for lack of finance," the MoS, HRD said.

He also informed the Lok Sabha that the IoEs shall have flexibility of course structure in terms of credit hours and number of years to take a degree, after the approval of its Governing council and subject to broadly conforming the minimum prevailing standards.

"The IoEs will have freedom to enter into academic collaboration with top 500 Global ranking institutions without approval of the Government or UGC, except with institutions from negative list of countries determined by the Ministry of External Affairs or the Ministry of Home Affairs," Satya Pal Singh said.

As per the UGC Guidelines and Regulations, no timeline has been prescribed for the selection of the IoEs.