Preface

Historically India has been a world leader in higher learning. Our universities like Nalanda and Takshashila were foremost learning centers of the world. The profound knowledge of these centres attracted scholars from across the world. After these seats of learning ceased to exist, great universities of the western world came into being, marking the shift in knowledge production and dissemination from the East to the West.

We need to restore our rightful place and make our universities and colleges producers of knowledge for the world. In this endeavour, the government is committed to ensuring that our higher education institutions achieve the highest levels of global excellence in teaching and research. To start with, it is proposed to provide an enabling regulatory architecture to ten public and private institutions each to emerge as world-class Teaching and Research Institution. They would be facilitated by giving autonomy on academic, administrative and financial matters. It will enable meritorious and talented students of India and abroad, irrespective of their financial status, to realize their dreams and enrol for getting highest quality knowledge, taught by renowned global knowledge providers.

The above initiative is the beginning of our journey to restore the original mandate of higher education regulators, as facilitators and guides, driven by norms of self-disclosure and transparency, instead of top-down command and control and micromanagement, in the quest to achieve world-class standards in all colleges and universities. This would enable our universities to become leading global canters of knowledge production.

• Policy on Establishment of World Class Institutions
• UGC (Declaration of Government Educational Institutions as World Class Institutions) Guidelines, 2016
• UGC (World Class Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2016

NOTE: Comments/Views/Suggestions on draft Guidelines and Regulations for establishment of World Class Institutions can be sent latest by 28th October 2016 on email wci-mhrd@gov.in OR in hard copies at R.N.405-C, Dept. Of Higher Education, Ministry of HRD, Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi.