Indian institutes may soon find their place amongst the top ranked colleges globally. The central government has identified 10 most prestigious educational institutions across the country, with the aim to provide them substantial funding & supervision, to eventually lead them into top 100 worldwide academic rankings.
Indian institutes like few IITs and IISc have consistently been ranked amongst the top 500 global institutions by renowned agencies like QS and Times. With such high academic stature, these institutions have been drawn up by the Human Resource Development ministry to further explore their potential. The institutes shall receive funding to the tune of 100-500 crores for the next 3-4 years, for building world class research infrastructure and laboratories. The eventual intent is to push these colleges into the global top 100.
A senior official from the HRD Ministry stated that based on performance in the past 3 years, the ministry has shortlisted 8-10 institutes across India. These are likely to include IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Guwahati and IISc Bangalore. These institutes have sought funds of around 300-500 crores, and the assessment is being carried out as to how much grant can be awarded. The idea is to provide strong incentives to top performing colleges.
Prior to this year, none of the Indian institutions managed to feature in the top 200 international rankings. Impressively, IIT Delhi and IISc Bangalore have tiptoed into the top 200 of QS rankings this year. Though, several institutes from our Asian counterparts China and South Korea have already registered their names amongst top 50. Both these nations, in addition to Singapore, have introduced several policy measures and considerable funding for ensuring superior quality of higher education.
The Modi government has taken up the initiative to drive these top 10 Indian institutes into the elite league of global colleges. It is learnt that Smriti Irani led HRD ministry has already positioned this plan as a part of the upcoming budget. With our President Pranab Mukherjee often lamenting the fading global stature of our institutions, this proposal appears to be a rescue mission. Incidentally, this issue shall also come up for discussion at the visitor's conference to be held at Rashtrapati Bhavan next week.