July 25, 2016
Sugata Bose speaks in LS regarding an enabling regulatory architecture in higher education institutions (Full Transcript)
Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is sad to read the annexure that has been provided by the Hon’ble minister as part of his reply. There are no institutions of higher education in India that figure in the top 250 on the list and there are no universities that figure in the top 500 of the list that he has provided. It is a matter of only small satisfaction for me that the university that figures at the top as it war is Jadavpur University from West Bengal which is in the 500-600 range of the world rankings of the TIME’s higher education supplement.
Of course, it will not be right only to bemoan the fact that we don’t figure on this list. But we have to device a proper strategy to make sure that our institutions of higher educations are globally competitive.
I want to ask a very specific question. Five months ago in his budget speech the Finance Minister had declared that the government will set up an enabling regulatory architecture for the emergence of ten public and ten private institutions as world class centers of excellence in teaching and research.
What specific progress has been made to set up such an enabling architecture and what criteria will the government use to select these 20 institutions? Will they pay attention to state universities which are poorly funded and yet do better than many central universities?
We have Jadavpur University & University of Calcutta in top 800 of the list you provided; they are state universities & not central universities. So, will you give special attention to state universities when you select these top 20 institutions for global competition?
