Institution of Eminence: BHU to invite best professors of world, says VC

Banaras Hindu University, which was awarded the status of ‘Institution of Eminence’ by the union human resource development ministry, will invite the best professors of science and humanities to the institution for delivering lectures, its vice chancellor prof Rakesh Bhatnagar said on Friday.

The university also had plans to focus on quality research in physical sciences, he said.

“Getting the status of Institute of Eminence is a matter of great joy. This will certainly help improve the quality of education and research,” Bhatnagar said.

He explained the IoE status provided the university the freedom to recruit faculty from outside India (subject to a limit of 25% of the faculty strength for public institutions).Bhatnagar said he wanted to see BHU among the top 10 universities of the world.

The new status also provides freedom to enter into academic collaborations with other institutions within the country, besides enabling the university have its own transparent merit-based system for admission of students, admit foreign students on merit subject to a maximum of 30% of the strength of domestic students and the authority to fix and charge fees from foreign students without restriction.

It also provides autonomy to determine the domestic students’ fees, subject to the condition that no student who gets selected for admission is turned away for lack of finance.

Under this tag, academic collaborations with foreign higher educational institutions (in top 500) would be exempt from government approval.

He said there was autonomy to offer online courses with a restriction that not more than 20% of the programme should be in the online mode. Certificate courses can entirely be through the online mode.

Bhatnagar also said facilities for foreign students and domestic students would be increased. The Institution of Eminence status also gave the university the freedom to hire personnel from industry as faculty who were experts in their areas but may not have the requisite higher academic qualifications, he said.