IIMs To Soon Appoint Own Directors

Union HRD Minister, Prakash Javadekar, in an exclusive interview with Suman K. Jha and Sreerupa Sil, answers a range of questions and says that his priority is to improve education in government schools. He also categorically states that research seats at JNU are not being slashed, as is being widely speculated. They, in fact, will go up. Excerpts:

- Suman K. Jha and Sreerupa Sil

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the NIRF rankings?

The National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) is an effort towards improving quality. We have taken a series of measures in higher education. One of them is is the NIRF, another is the complete autonomy to the IIMs. We are also looking at expanding the educational facility by the Higher Education Financing Agency. Nearly $3 billion will be infused into educational research and infrastructure in the next 3-4 years. We are also putting up the new National Academic Depository. Quality is being improved by bringing in more research, more quality, more innovations and more scholarships.

NIRF is a certification of the rankings of national institutes. We have nearly 844 universities, 38,000 colleges, more than 200 institutes of national importance, we put all of these together and rank them.We rank them on the basis of their academic quality, research, teaching outcomes, peer reviews, etc.

Overall it was a grand success, it was the second time you did the rankings and it was really appreciated. Some pointers stood out — like the universities that have been in controversies, were ranked highly. You said about JNU, that the university ranking was not because of Afzal’s slogans, but because of the science research. But JNU has been doing very well in social science research as well…

I will tell you why JNU has stood out. The news coverage (of the controversies) is not the cause. The real cause of ranking is the excellent results in research in many fields that is conducted in JNU as well as their overall academic performance. It’s not only about social sciences. JNU is much more than one or two departments.

Q: The President recently said that we should celebrate dissent in universities. Do you think for this government, this is one issue that needs to be seriously looked at?