Centre to set up world class varsities

The committee, set up recently under the aegis of the Human Resource Development Ministry, comprises eminent film personality Girish Karnad and historian Ramchandra Guha, among others .

On the basis of suggestions given by the panel the government plans to open the first of its kind of university in the country now.

The location of the proposed university, to be named after Nobel laureate and poet Rabindranath Tagore, is yet to be finalised, an HRD ministry official said.

The objective of the proposed university would be to impart knowledge in Liberal arts that would puts greater thrust on general knowledge and development of the student's rational thought and intellectual capabilities as against the professional, vocational and technical courses which emphasise on specialisation. “With the culture, literature and arts being the vehicles of creative expression, the promotion of studies in the liberal arts is essential to human resource development and capacity building in higher forms of expression and creative thought,” the ministry official said.

Those undergoing liberal arts education would develop an active engagement with knowledge and not be just the passive recipient of a hundred boring facts, he said.
The government intends to establish such universities  across 11th and 12th Five Year Plans, between 2007 and 2017. The National Development Council of the Planning Commission has already approved the setting up of 14 such world class universities.

The ministry, however, had so far zeroed in on five of the 14 proposed innovation universities that would offer students one deep theme of innovation in the field of liberal arts, health, urban planning, energy and power around which an ecosystem of research and teaching would be built, the HRD official said.