MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
(DR. SATYA PAL SINGH)
(a): University Grants Commission (UGC) has constituted an Empowered Expert Committee
(EEC) consisting of Shri G. Gopalaswami, former Chief Election Commissionor; Shri Pritam
Singh, former Director MDI & IIM Lucknow; Shri Tarun Khanna, Professor, Harvard Business
School & Ms. Renu Khator, Chancellor of the University of Houston System for identifying the
Institutions of Eminence (IoEs). The powers and functions of EEC are as under:
i. Scrutinizing and appraising the proposals submitted for IoEs
ii. Making recommendations to the Commission for the purposes of selection of IoEs.
iii. Monitoring and reviewing of implementation plans of IoEs.
iv. Conducting review of IoEs in order to ensure quality.
v. Evolving such other monitoring and review systems with the objective of guiding and
supervising the growth of IoEs.
vi. Deciding on changes in transfer of sponsorship from any or all of the original
sponsors of IoEs.
vii. Making recommendations to the Commission with respect to the liquidation of the
Corpus Fund of an IoE.
viii. Assessing deviations from the goals of IoEs and making recommendations to the
Commission regarding Penalties for the same.
(b) to (d): The EEC, after thorough examination of applications and presentations made by
the institutions, made its recommendations to UGC. The UGC, in its meeting held on 9th July,
2018, considered and approved the report of EEC and recommended that the following 3
institutions from the public category for issuance of Orders as Institutions of Eminence:
(i) Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore
(ii) Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi
(iii) Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay
In addition, the following three Private Institutions have been recommended for
issuance of Letter of Intent:
(i) Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences (BITS), Pilani
(ii) Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal
(iii) Jio Institute under the Greenfield category. It will be set up of an Institutions of
Eminence Deemed to be University within three years of issuance of ‘Letter of
Intent’.
Under this scheme, the selected IoEs will be provided greater autonomy such as 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, etc. Each public Institution selected as IoE
shall be provided financial assistance upto Rupees 1000 Crore over a period of five years.
(e): Apart from identifying Institutions as IoEs, EEC has suggested that the Central
Government may consider establishing a separate program to invest in them with a different
set of defined goals and expectations especially for sectoral Institutions and standalone
Institutions/Universities. At present, no decision has been taken by this Ministry in this
regard.
(f): Apart from the scheme of establishment of ‘Institutions of Eminence’, the Government
has taken several steps to address the issue of improving the quality of higher education in
the country so as to enable Indian students to get quality education and research facilities
within the country. These include launching of both Centrally sponsored schemes like
Rashtriya Uchchtar Siksha Abhiyaan (RUSA) and targeted projects such as increasing the
number of Institutes of National Importance, launching of Global Initiative of Academic
Networks (GIAN) (to engage talented pool of international scientists and entrepreneurs with
Higher Educational Institutes in India to augment the country''s existing academic quality),
National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) (to enable Institutions to assess
themselves and get motivated to improve), an Impacting Research Innovation And
Technology (IMPRINT) scheme (for Research to solve major engineering and technology
challenges in selected domains needed by the country), SWAYAM & SWAYAM PRABHA (to
take the best teaching learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged students),
Uchhatar Avishkar Yojana (UAY) (to promote innovation and to bring coordinated action in
those areas which have direct relevance to the manufacturing and design industry), etc.
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