State government to impress upon Centre to include one varsity in top-20 list for developing it as world-class university
BY OUR STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI, Oct 20: Dispur will try to hard sell the State’s leading universities before the Centre for including them in the list of top 20 Indian universities, which Prime Minister rendra Modi has proposed to develop as world class universities.
Sources in Dispur told The Sentinel that State Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma will hold a meeting with Vice Chancellors of Gauhati University, Dibrugarh University and Cotton University to discuss the issue. The Vice Chancellors will be asked to make power point presentations on their unique selling points and potentials to excel before a panel of experts.
After detailed discussions with experts, educationists, students and other stake holders, the State Government will send a comprehensive report to the Centre to press its demand.
The Prime Minister had announced last week a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore to be given to the top 20 Indian universities for their development, in order to ensure that the top-ranking institutions are counted among the best in the world. He had said measures like granting Central status were now “a thing of the past” and that his government had undertaken “a step forward” towards making 10 private and 10 government universities world class.
“We will provide an assistance of Rs 10,000 crore to 10 private universities and an equal number of government ones for a period of five years. All these universities have to do is to demonstrate their potential to become world class,” Modi had said while addressing a function on the centery celebrations of the Pat University in Bihar.
Sources said Dispur will try to hard sell Gauhati University (GU) more before the Centre for the World Class status on the ground that it is the premier varsity in the Northeast. GU has also been able to grow as the centre of excellence over the years. The university has tiol Assessment and Accreditation Council (AC) accreditation with a score of 3.5 or above and figured in the tiol Institute Ranking Framework’s (NIRF) list of top 50 institutions.
In a bid to keep pace with fast changing global scerio in the field of higher education, GU had recently signed a memorandum of understanding with tiol University of Laos and a few other reputed global institutions. The varsity is already attracting students from Southeast Asian countries.
The All Assam Students’ Union and other students’ organisations have been demanding that the Centre set up world class education institutions in the State.