Govt notifies 'Institute-of-Eminence' status for all shortlisted institutes except BITS
The HRD Ministry has officially notified the 'Institute of Eminence' (IoE) tag for five of six selected institutes. The tag has been kept on hold for Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) till the UGC approves its branches in Goa and Hyderabad, sources told IE. UGC insists these branches are illegal, while BITS claims otherwise. Incidentally, these five include the non-existent Jio Institute.
About the IoE scheme
Two years after the Narendra Modi government announced IoE status for 20 top educational institutes, only six were named earlier this month: the state-run IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay and IISc Bangalore, and the private BITS, Manipal Institute, and Jio Institute. The Empowered Expert Committee (EEC), which was tasked with shortlisting the institutes, cited weak teaching quality and poor research for not being able to find 20.
Goal is to get these institutes into top global rankings
The IoEs will get special privileges like generous grants, complete autonomy, ability to hire foreign faculty, etc. Their goal is to break into the top 500 in at least one globally reputed ranking list in 10 years, and eventually into the top 100.
The BITS conundrum
The UGC-BITS tussle started around three years ago, when UGC asked it, along with nine other deemed universities, to shut down its off-campus centres since they didn't have UGC's approval. In response, BITS took it to the Delhi HC, arguing that its Goa and Hyderabad centres were set up in 2004 and 2008 respectively, before the Deemed University Regulations were introduced in 2016.
For Jio, the tag is conditional, HRD had said
The situation puts BITS in a quandary: the HRD has practically decided to withhold its IoE status till it withdraws the court case and applies for UGC's approval of its two off-campus centres. Earlier, the ministry said the tag for Jio was conditional too: it'll get it only if it's "able to establish itself in three years and meet expectations of the expert committee."
