The files show contenders had equally detailed academic plans with focus on learning pedagogy, faculty and curriculum.
New Delhi: When the human resource development ministry granted ‘eminence status’ to the yet-to-be-built Jio University — backed by Reliance Foundation — in July this year, the selection panel had defended the move on the ground that no other greenfield institute had a better academic plan.
“Most institutions that applied under the Greenfield category (for proposed institutes) only talked about financial projections. They did not have a clear academic plan like Jio Institute did,” former chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami who headed the panel had told ThePrint.
However, ThePrint studied the applications of the other contenders after accessing them through the RTI Act and found most had equally detailed academic proposals.
The other contenders included KREA University backed by former RBI chief Raghuram Rajan, Vedanta University proposed by Vedanta Foundation and DICE Knowledge Foundation backed by Yes Bank.
Also read: Congress students’ wing NSUI makes Jio’s eminence tag an election issue in DU polls
Their plans included proposals to bring in a new pedagogy of learning, hiring faculty from international institutions and introducing curriculum based on curriculum at Ivy League institutions. Most of these proposals, just like that of Jio, had recommendations from premier foreign universities such as King’s College, London, and New York University.
Jio University was picked ahead of 11 other proposals in the Greenfield category, meant for institutions that are yet to be established. The Modi government’s decision to grant it the Institute of Eminence (IoE) tag had triggered a controversy in July.
The yet-to-be-built university was among six institutions to be conferred the status — the others being IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi, IISc Bangalore, and private players BITS Pilani and Manipal University. The selected government institutions will get funding and greater autonomy while the private ones can escape much of the government regulation.
Gopalaswami did not respond to questions from ThePrint based on the new information accessed from the applications.
How the proposals stack up
The proposal from Reliance said Jio would be a multidisciplinary university offering courses in humanities, engineering, medical sciences, sports, law, performing arts, sciences and urban planning, among others.
The university would hire faculty from international universities, it said.
Reliance Foundation also named the former director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Raghunath Mashelkar, as the university chancellor. Mashelkar will also be on the governing council along with Deepak C. Jain, a prominent Indian professor in the United States, Mukesh Ambani and Nita Ambani.
Jio’s application came with a recommendation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In its first five years of existence, Jio proposes to generate revenue of Rs 1,291 crore — the highest among the 11 institutes — while pegging expenditure at Rs 6,815 crore. It also proposes to pay hefty salaries to faculty, calculating that it will spend Rs 93 crore on salaries alone in its first functional year.
Also read: Govt colleges wanted ‘Institute of Eminence’ tag for money, freedom, not excellence, says panel
In contrast, the application for KREA, a proposed liberal arts university in Chennai, promised a value-based curriculum that matches Ivy League universities. The proposal was backed by former RBI governor and economist Raghuram Rajan, former ICICI chairman and Padma Bhushan awardee Narayanan Vaghul and economist Sundar Ramaswamy, industrialists Anand Mahindra and Biocon chief Kiran Shaw.
This proposed university will offer three-year BA and BSc programmes, with an optional fourth year in a variety of disciplines. It promised to hire faculty from reputed foreign institutions and prominent Indian institutes such as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Xavier’s Institute of Management (XLRI) among others.
The vice-chancellor was to be Vaghul himself. The university proposed generating revenue of Rs 138.50 crore in the first five years while pegging expenditure at Rs 1,186.22 crore.
The Vedanta University, backed by the Vedanta Foundation, proposed partnerships with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Nano Bioscience Institute at Wayne State University.
The multi-disciplinary university, offering courses in engineering, science and arts, is to come up in Odisha. Its proposal said that it would lay special emphasis on nano-bioscience, structural biology and molecular and atomic simulations.
Vedanta has the founding dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, Ranjan Mathai, also a former foreign secretary, the co-founder of Ashoka University, Pramath Raj Sinha, and Stanford professor Roger Kornberg on its advisory board.
The university had pegged its proposed revenue for the first five years at Rs 1,665.80 crore, with an investment of about Rs 8,218.65 crore during the same period.
Most international recommendations
The proposal from DICE Knowledge Foundation to set up centres in three places had the most international recommendations. Its plan claimed the support of New York University, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and King’s College, London, among others.
Also read: Education panel chief defends Jio eminence tag, says no other had better plan
The proposal had the backing of the founder, managing director and CEO of Yes Bank, Rana Kapoor and its advisory board had the likes of the National Stock Exchange CEO Vikram Limaye. The university had proposed three campuses — in Gurugram, Mumbai and Bengaluru — at which it was to offer multidisciplinary courses.
DICE had proposed an expenditure of Rs 540 crore in the first five years. It hoped to generate Rs 360 crore from students fee.
Among the others, the Indus Tech University, which was proposed to come up in Delhi, had seven people from the founding team of Ashoka University, including Vineet Gupta, Ashish Gupta and Pramod Bhasin, on its advisory board.
The Indian Institute of Human Settlements, which proposed to come up in Bengaluru, had Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Vijay Kelkar, the man behind the Goods and Services Tax (GST), backing it.
Reliance scores on infrastructure
Where Reliance’s proposal scored over the others, the documents show, was on the infrastructure pitch. It submitted an extra booklet, along with its proposal, which only details plans for the campus.
This booklet said Jio University would be constructed on an 800-acre plot close to both Mumbai and Pune.
The plot, the proposal said, has been chosen on the lines of campuses at Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge universities. It will have a separate area for faculty, with four-bedroom houses for professors and smaller ones for assistant professors, associate professors and lecturers.
‘Government should have looked at track record’
A representative of ISB, Hyderabad, which had also applied under the Greenfield category, told ThePrint that the government should have looked at the track record of the applicants.
“The only thing that ISB had in its proposal that others did not is that we had the best track record in setting up an institution that has actually reached international rankings,” the representative said.
Also read: Files of 4 institutes that were competing with Jio for ‘eminence’ tag go missing from UGC
The ISB is a premier management institute that had hoped to expand its campus into a multidisciplinary university. Incidentally, its proposal is among the files missing from a safe room at the University Grants Commission (UGC) headquarters in New Delhi, as reported by ThePrint last month.
“If the idea was to pick a team that is going to build something world class, the track record was there. In fact, the HRD minister Prakash Javadekar had gone on record in Parliament to say that the IoE itself was being created for institutions like ISB which deserve to be treated as a full-fledged university. Our impression was they were looking to free up institutions like ours to reach world rankings,” the ISB representative said.
Those associated with other universities, however, said they would go ahead with their plans with or without the ‘eminence’ tag.
“Good quality institutions will come up even if they don’t get the tag. While eminence is a good tag, that is not something that we worry about too much,” said a representative associated with Indus Tech University, which is to come up in Delhi.
“We just have to continue to do the good work. Indus Tech aims to bring into the field of technology what Ashoka did to liberal arts and that is what we are working towards.”
Disclosure: Nandan Nilekani and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw are investors in ThePrint.
May remind the readers about a dialogue from Deewar – Mere Paas Maan Hai! You know what I mean! A ‘nationalist’ government’s only concern seems to be international rankings, when everyone knows that the rankings are NOT the most appropriate way to assess the quality – they at best provide a partial sense. I don’t really understand how people believe that money can buy you quality – when we are all taught that money is only a medium of exchange. Obsession with rankings built by money – what an idea, sirji! IIMs and IITs did not become great teaching institution by chasing rankings – so is the case with hundred odd colleges and institutions that have survived for more than 100 years in India. Individuals with vision and commitment make the difference – they can in India and outside. Tax rebates and government patronage of the kind is being offered through tweaks by the PMO (Indian Express article) will not.
Considering the credentials of all the applicants it would be wise to provide all of them after due diligence the opportunity to set up institutes as population is so huge we need more quality learning centres for accelerated progress