INSTITUTION OF EMINENCE (Syllabus: GS Paper 2 - Education)

Context: An expert panel and the UGC have recommended that Jadavpur University and Jamia Hamdard University, which were shortlisted by the Centre for granting Institutions of Eminence (IoE) status, should not be granted the tag.

• The Tamil Nadu government has withdrawn the proposal submitted earlier to confer the status of IoE on the Anna University.
• The Ministry of Education is yet to take call on the recommendations by the Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) and the University Grants Commission (UGC).

Institution of Eminence (IOE)

• About: It is a recognition scheme to empower higher education institutes in India. It was first announced in 2016 Union budget.
• Objectives: To provide an enabling regulatory architecture to ten public and ten private Higher Educational institutions to emerge as world-class teaching and research institutions.
• Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Education.

• Selection Criteria: UGC had constituted an Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) under Gopalasamy chairmanship; to recommend a list of institutions on the basis of following criteria:

• Institutions, which have figured in the top 500 of QS World University Rankings or top 50 of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings, shall be recommended for the IoE status.
• Yet to be established (Greenfield Institution) will also be recommended. They would get 3-year period to establish and operationalise, and thereafter, EEC will consider giving IoE status to such institutions.
• Benefits:
• It will ensure complete autonomy to the selected institutions and facilitate them to grow more rapidly.
• They will get more opportunity to scale up their operations with more skills and quality improvement so that they become World Class Institutions in the field of education.
• Greater autonomy to admit foreign students up to 30% of admitted students.
• To recruit foreign faculty up to 25% of faculty strength.
• To offer online courses up to 20% of its programmes.
• To enter into academic collaboration with top 500 in the world ranking Institutions without permission of UGC.
• Free to fix and charge fees from foreign students without restriction.
• The flexibility of course structure in terms of number of credit hours and years to take a degree.
• Complete flexibility in fixing of curriculum and syllabus.