Centre mulls doubling of total seats in premier institutions
SHILLONG: The Centre is planning to double the total number of seats in premier institutes across the country to 20,000, Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar said on Tuesday.
Speaking to media persons in the city after a meeting with directors and chairmen of all Indian Institutes of Management on Tuesday, the Minister said all IIMs have been asked to submit their expansion plan at the earliest.
The meeting was held at Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management in Shillong.
Javadekar said the shortage of faculty at IIMs would be addressed through PhD programmes and the Ministry would also take the government’s approval to extend the Prime Minister’s scholarship to IIMs. The scholarship is currently restricted to IITs and NITs in the country.
The minister said the shortage of faculty at IIMs is not much but it is about 30 per cent in the IITs. He also wanted the IIMs to participate in the Centre’s initiative to make 20 world-class universities and institutions in the country, of which 10 will be government institutes.
When asked whether the North East would benefit from the proposed world-class institutes, Javadekar said after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, “the Union government’s focus is on all sectors of the region”.
Meanwhile, he stated that the IIMs have also been asked to participate in creating contents for Swayam, a massive open online courses (MOOCs) platform that will offer over 2,000 courses to around three crore students across the country.
The HRD Ministry also wants IIMs to play an active role in Swayam MOOCs project under which there will be free tutorials and online lectures for the students.
Swayam is an IT platform that will host massive open online courses and provide high-quality education on various subjects from school level (classes IX-XII) to UG and PG students.
On quota for faculty posts at IIMs, which the Minister had spoken about at IIM-Ahmedabad, Javadekar took a U-turn saying, “Reservation is already there, I don’t know who started it but it is the Constitution and no one can bypass it.”
Few days ago, the Minister had said the Centre intended to bring a bill to introduce quota for faculty positions at IIMs.
When asked if the Ministry was mulling more IIMs in the North East, he said it would first like to make full use of the central institutions that have been established in the region before allotting any more IIMs.