'Eminence' tag to give institutes freedom in recruitment of faculty members

A fee hike may not be on the cards, at least in the immediate future

The HRD ministry's decision to give six institutes the status of 'Institutions of Eminence' on Tuesday will allow them them freedom to recruit more faculty, say experts. This is a crucial parameters that has contributed to India's low representation in the global rankings.

The Association of Indian Universities (AIU) estimates India's average faculty-student ratio for higher educational institutions at around 1:27. Delhi University, which gets ranked in the 601-800 band in global rankings such as that of Times Higher Education (THE), has a ratio in upwards of 20 students for each faculty. Usually, institutes with higher ranking have a faculty-student ratio of 1:10.

The six names included three public institutions such as Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, IIT Delhi and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru and three private institutes including Reliance Foundation's Jio Institute, BITS Pilani and Manipal University.

With the tag of 'eminence', the six institutes now not only stand to gain greater autonomy over their peers, but the public institutes also bag additional government funding for research and other activities. The government will be spending around Rs 10 billion towards funding the institutes of eminence.

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In fact, the government is of the view that an improved faculty:student ratio, international-to-domestic faculty ratio and international-to-domestic student ratio will also help these institutes of eminence gain global prominence.

This is being done by way of freeing up these universities or institutes from several regulatory control and according greater autonomy in the areas of academics, administration and research.

So while public and private universities have to currently seek a UGC approval before making changes to its curriculum and launching a new program, the one recognised as an institute of eminence by the government will have the freedom to do so on its own. While a greater clarity awaits, it has been learnt that these institutes will also bag freedom to tweak remuneration structures in order to attract quality faculty members, both domestic and foreign.

Article Source : BS