| | 4 December 2017HIGHERReviewEditorial"It is our commitment to empower Higher Educational institutions to help them become world class teaching and research institutions. An enabling regulatory architecture will be provided to ten public and ten private institutions to emerge as world-class teaching and research Institutions. This will enhance affordable access to high quality education for ordinary Indians. A detailed scheme will be formulated," said Finance Minister during his budget speech in 2016. As a manifestation of the budget speech, UGC has created a detailed scheme named Institutions of Eminence and it is already here. The Proposal invitation from UGC for Institutions of Eminence reads, "The Government is committed to improvement of quality of higher educational institutions. In this regard, the Government intends to establish twenty `Institutions of Eminence' to achieve world class status, from amongst the existing Government/private institutions and new institutions from the private sector." Now, the UGC officials must be having a busy year-end at office, because, they have already received several applications from most reputed universities and colleges wishing to be named as `Institute of Eminence.' Why the tag of `Institute of Eminence' is so important? The answer is very simple; these selected institutions will be granted unprecedented autonomy by the government in a wide range of matters: governance, faculty and staff salaries, student fees, foreign faculty and students up to 30 percent, course offerings, content and many more. Moreover, they will be completely free of UGC regulations. Yes, it is a great move to create a handful of institutions, which may or may not find a place among top 100 global universities in a span of 15 years from now. However, in a country that has 789 universities, 37,204 colleges and 70 million students, how are we going to ensure that majority of ordinary Indians get affordable accesses to quality education? For that, we prefer to have a well-performing higher education system, rather than stand-alone intuitions of eminence. In this issue, we have identified some of the innovative universities in the country under the title `University of the Year 2017.' On the cover, we feature PDM University, one of the most technically advanced campuses in the country. Enjoy Reading. Sarath ShyamManaging Editorsarath@thehighereducationreview.comBuilding Institutions of Eminence Vol 5 · Issue 11-5 · December 21 - 2017Publisher & Editor Alok ChaturvediManaging Editor Sarath Shyam Editorial Team Amrutha Ram Raman Balakrishnan Riya Das Prisila S Sneha Choudhury Editorial Queries Sales & Advertisement Advertisement queries Office To Subscribe Visit www.thehighereducationreview.com/subscription or send email to subscription@thehighereducationreview.comCover price is Rs. 150 per issue.Printed and Published By Alok Chaturvedi on behalf of BizprintMedia Technologies Pvt Ltd and Printed at Precision Fototype Services at Sri Sabari Shopping Complex, 24 Residency Road Bangalore-560025 and Published At No. 124, 2nd Floor, Surya Chambers, Old Airport Road, Murigheshpalya, Bangalore-560017.Copyright © 2017 BizprintMedia Technologies Pvt Ltd, All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher.Prathyoosh.K.Shajiadvertise@thehighereducationreview.comNo.124, 2nd Floor, South Block, Surya Chambers, Airport Main Road, Bangalore 560017 Tel: 080-46441103T: 080-46441192editor@thehighereducationreview.comCirculation Manager Magendran PerumalGM Sales & Marketing Monisha RavinarayanGroup Art Director Ashok KumarSr. Visualizer MaitreyeeVisualizers Vimalraj M Siva Sankar Sheethal M S Mohana krishnanHigherEducationReviewHIGHERReview
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