N Gopalaswami appointed EEC chief, committee to select 20 ‘institutes of eminence’
The 20 selected institutes will enjoy complete academic and administrative autonomy. The government will run 10 of these and they will receive special funding.
Former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami has been appointed chairperson of the empowered expert committee (EEC) that will be the final authority to select 20 “institutes of eminence”, which will be free from government regulations, an official said.
The appointments committee of the Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has selected the members and the chairperson, said the official who doesn’t want to be named.
According to officials, the EEC is expected to select the 20 institutes as early as this summer.
The four-member panel includes Renu Khator, who is the chancellor of the University of Houston System and president of the University of Houston. She is the first foreign-born president of the university and the second woman to hold the position.
Another member is Gurgaon-based Management Development Institute’s (MDI) R Pritam Singh, a Padma Shri recipient in management studies who sits on the boards of five private and public sector organisations.
The third member is Tarun Khanna, a Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School, where he is teaching since 1993 after his education in Princeton and Harvard. He has taught courses on strategy, corporate governance and international business to MBA and PhD students and senior executives.
The institutes of eminence scheme under the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry aims to project Indian institutes to global recognition. The 20 selected institutes will enjoy complete academic and administrative autonomy. The government will run 10 of these and they will receive special funding.
The EEC will be responsible for selecting and monitoring the institutes. It will recommend names of the chosen institutes to the University Grants Commission (UGC).
“We wanted to have members with global work experience as it will help these institutes achieve global recognition,” said a senior HRD official requesting anonymity.
A major task of the EEC will be to monitor and review the 20 institutions and ensure quality, decide on appeals if any, liquidation of corpus fund if needed, verify compliance to financial requirements if required, assess deviations from goals and standards.
The panel will review the institutes once every three years for adherence to their implementation plan until they achieve the top 100 global ranking slot for two consecutive years. The institutes will have to inform the EEC every year about their progress and may be asked to address deficiencies or face penal action if they fail to deliver, officials said.
