DU defers decision to accept eminence tag

Scheme will result in increased privatisation of university: DUTA

The decision to accept the Institute of Eminence (IOE) status for Delhi University was deferred at a meeting of the Executive Council (EC) on Saturday following protests from council members.

The Delhi University Teachers’ Union (DUTA) said the scheme would result in increased privatisation of the university.

In a critique sent to the administration, DUTA said the scheme would also be a huge burden on the university as it called for “world-class” infrastructure, provisions for foreign faculty with differential pay scales and removed caps on fee structures among other issues.

The EC members demanded that various correspondence between the university and the government be shared with them for an informed decision. These include guidelines for the IOE scheme, application submitted by DU to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, letter conferring IOE and other developments, the members wrote in a letter to the Registrar.

In the meeting, it was discussed that the modalities of the IOE scheme implemented in particular institutions would be based on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to be drawn up between the government and the university and to be revised every five years. Signing the MoU would make the university an “Institution of Eminence Deemed to be University’ as opposed to a “Deemed to be University” under the University Grants Commission’s guidelines.

‘Sponsoring agency’

Further, the governance system to be followed by such an IOE deemed university would be distinct from the governance structure of the “sponsoring agency”, they said. Such a body would be at “arms-length” distance from the existing governing body and would be required to deliver desired outcomes in “a very short time frame”, said EC members, who had earlier protested the creation of such alternative centres of governance in the university that would be outside the purview of statutory bodies.

EC member Rajesh Jha said the Vice-Chancellor was reluctant to share the correspondence and informed that the council that the administration would confer with the government before doing any such thing.