Govt plans 14 new innovation varsities

Chennai:

The Union government is planning to set up as many as 14 Innovation Universities which will focus purely on research, according to Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource and Development E Ahamed.

Addressing the graduates of B S Abdur Rahman University during the institute’s 24^th Graduation Day, the minister said the universities will be research intensive varsities and will aim at organizing, promoting and conducting research in collaboration or association with any other university or institution of research.

He said the government has undertaken a slew of measures to improve higher education in the country by raising the budget allocations almost seven times in recent years besides setting up new institutions of higher learning both in basic and applied areas.

“We have decided to create National Commission for Higher Education and Research, National Authority for regulation in Accreditation of Higher education institutions besides Education Tribunals,” Ahamed said.

“There will be around 800 universities of all types (up from 500) with nearly 50,000 colleges and 10 of our institions will feature among the top 100 of the world,” the minister said.

He said reforms in the form of mandatory accreditation, prohibiting and punishing unfair practices in technical and medical educations regulation of entry and operation of Foreign Educational Institutes and for establishment of educational tribunals are ready for legislation which will further streamline the process for quality education.

The government has accorded blanket permission to all institutions of higher learning to collaborate with foreign institutions in all areas of mutual interest, he said.

He said the government is also planning to set up number of institutions of higher learning in public private partnership mode.

Vice-chancellor of the university P Kanniappan said the university will soon have a new Rs 18 crore aeronautical block besides tying up with Ryerson University, Canada to establish joint energy research centre at the varsity.