INDIA
bookmark

Plan for 35 multidisciplinary research universities

India has prepared an ambitious plan to establish ‘multidisciplinary education and research universities’ or MERUs of global standard, proposing to upgrade about 35 publicly funded universities across the country.

The project draft proposal, which will soon move to the cabinet for approval, envisages an outlay of INR1 billion (or about US$13.8 million) for each university in the first phase to broaden the range of courses on offer.

Multidisciplinary higher education is a key theme in the National Education Policy (NEP) announced last year and the process will start with the approvals of the MERUs. However, a more holistic education should in the long term be the aim of all undergraduate programmes, including those in professional, technical and vocational disciplines, according to the NEP document.

Some multidisciplinary programmes will be offered across institutions by grouping them into ‘clusters’.

Engineering institutions, such as the country’s top-ranked Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), which have traditionally focused on engineering and technology, will move towards more holistic and multidisciplinary education, with more arts and humanities being offered alongside engineering degrees, as envisaged in the NEP.

IIT Guwahati in Assam for example is opening a medical school, a management school and already offers undergraduate degrees in design. IIT Delhi is setting up a school of public policy. IIT Gandhinagar said it already had schools of design and of environmental science.

IIT Madras in Chennai has said its students can choose courses from other departments and at other approved institutions, including Indian history, psychology and economics. Some can be grouped to together to constitute a ‘minor’ in addition to the undergraduate major discipline.

Single-stream degrees to be phased out

Single-stream higher education institutions which concentrate on just one discipline will be “phased out”, and instead will move towards becoming multidisciplinary institutions or parts of “vibrant multidisciplinary higher education clusters”, according to the government.

Departments of languages, literature, music, philosophy, Indology, art, dance, theatre, education, mathematics, statistics, pure and applied sciences, sociology, economics, sports, translation and interpretation, and other subjects will be strengthened under the proposal.

IIT Kharagpur Director Virendra Kumar Tewari said IIT Kharagpur and several other IITs are already “operating at multidisciplinary levels” in accordance with NEP reforms. For example, it has opened a law school with a focus on intellectual property.

Tewari noted that IIT Kharagpur has departments that are relatively unique in the IIT system, such as mining engineering, agricultural and food engineering, ocean engineering, naval architecture, and architecture and regional planning.

“Furthermore, we have unique schools, centres and academies for law, quality and reliability, the science of happiness, classical and folk arts, rural development etc,” he told University World News.

“We have specific programmes as well, such as financial engineering, engineering entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence and machine learning, being offered as dual degree programmes.”

Tewari said the departments, schools, centres and academies are run by IIT through grants received from the Ministry of Education, including for the infrastructure, facilities and human resources.

“Some of the schools, centres and academies were however set up with seed funding from our alumni and their families,” he said. “Alumni also participate in guiding the flow of the programmes and outreach, scholarships, faculty awards etc.

“As these are specialised areas, the academic units typically have their own faculty members in particular as well as visiting experts. The operations are managed through the head of the unit while a cluster of units forms verticals headed by respective deans of faculty,” he said.

Himanshu Rai, director of the Indian Institute of Management Indore, said the idea to establish MERUs is “a great one undoubtedly but needs more planning and action to be successful on the ground”.

Not an easy transition

The transition may not be easy for many specialised institutions in particular, as many institutions are already facing shortfalls in recruiting faculty, with many positions vacant even at top universities.

“I really see that it is going to take some great planning to implement,” Rai told University World News. “For staff requirements, the government needs to allow these institutions to hire from anywhere in the world and not just limited to India because we would need global talent.”

He added: “A fair degree of autonomy needs to be given to these centres to hire from anywhere in the world, and a fair bit of help needs to be extended in terms of appropriate budgeting.”

Many students agree with experts that interdisciplinary courses would be better preparation for research and welcomed greater flexibility in choosing courses. However, some noted that for some careers such as engineering, they may not be as popular with employers as more specialised disciplinary knowledge and may be seen as ‘watered-down’ engineering or science degrees.