Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) recently announced the list of 5 Institutes of Eminence (IoE). The institutes include IIT Madras, Banaras Hindu University, IIT Kharagpur, University of Delhi and University of Hyderabad. In addition, the Ministry also sent a letter of intent to 5 Private Universities for accepting and sending their preparedness for being declared as Institutions of Eminence.
Earlier, the Ministry had announced list of 6 institutes which were selected for the status of Institute of Eminence (IoE). These included 3 public institutions - IISc Bangalore, IIT Delhi, and IIT Bombay- and 3 private institutes- MAHE Manipal, BITS Pilani, and Jio Institute- which were issued letters of intent.
Till date MHRD has declared 16 institutions as IoEs, apart from which another 4 institutions where State Government's confirmation and commitment is awaited.
But how do the institutes benefit after getting the tag of 'Institute of Eminence'?
Every institute which has been accorded the status of Institute of Eminence will enjoy benefits which include additional funding, autonomy in recruitment, assessment patterns etc. The detailed benefits have been listed out below:
1. Government Institutions to get additional funding upto 1000 Cr.
2. The selected Institutions under IoE shall have complete academic and administrative autonomy.
3. The Institutions of Eminence will have complete financial autonomy to spend the resources raised and allocated, subject to general conditions & restrictions of the Statutes and GFR.
4. Academic collaborations with foreign higher educational institutions (in top 500) would be exempt from government approvals.
5. Freedom to hire personnel from industry, etc, as faculty who are experts in their areas but may not have the requisite higher academic qualifications.
6. Freedom to recruit faculty from outside India (limit of 25% of its faculty strength for public institution).
7. Freedom to enter into academic collaborations with other Institutions within the country.
8. Freedom to have own transparent merit based system for admission of students.
9. Freedom to admit additionally foreign students on merit subject to a maximum of 30% of the strength of admitted domestic students.
10. Freedom to fix and charge fees from foreign students without restriction.
11. Freedom to determine the domestic student fees, subject to the condition that no student who gets selected admission is turned away for lack of finance. Every Institute has to encourage scholarships and extension of loans facility.
12. Freedom to offer courses within a program as well as to offer degrees in newer areas, including inter-disciplinary ones, after approval of its Governing Council and conforming to the minimum prevailing standards.
13. Freedom to have the flexibility of course structure in terms of number of credit hours and years to take a degree, after approval of their Governing Council and conforming to the minimum prevailing standards.
14. Flexibility in fixing of curriculum and syllabus, with no UGC mandated curriculum structure.
15. Freedom to offer online courses as part of their programmes with a restriction that not more than 20% of the programme should be in online mode. Certificate courses can entirely be through online mode.
16. Students enrolment capacity to be 10,000 in 15 years. (Lower figure permitted with justification)
17. Faculty Student Ratio should be 1:20 at the time of Notification and should increase to 1:10 in five years.
18. UGC Inspection shall not apply to Institutions of Eminence.
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