“The Rs.60 crore will be divided fifty-fifty between faculty and infrastructure for students,” said Prof. Sopory, Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Vice-Chancellor. He pointed out that since JNU is one of the few research-oriented universities in the country, maintaining standards of current research as well as continuing with new projects was important for it to move forward.
“We have around 400 to 500 research projects going on, mostly with funding from outside. In fact, most of our funding comes from outside sources. However, now with the money coming in from the UGC, we have kept about Rs.30 crore aside for faculty research, and we have received about 200 proposals,” he said.
The university, he added, sought to encourage projects trans-disciplinary in nature and which had the potential to get converted into proper academic courses.
The JNU, like all Indian universities, fared badly in the global university rankings and Prof. Sopory said it was mostly because the institution did not know how to relay the correct information to the agencies conducting the rankings.
“We have formed a special cell to relay the correct sort of information and we are also going to consciously work towards better rankings from encouraging our faculty to publish more internationally to globalising the university. We have been signing MoUs with foreign universities as well as inviting faculty from abroad. Our faculty, too, get invited abroad,” he said.
Prof. Sopory said some of the JNU faculty members had published books that were considered the best in their subject, yet the rankings didn’t recognise them. “They wanted international journal publications as parameters for judging the faculty.”
With regard to infrastructure, the university also desperately falls short of hostels and the administration is planning to set aside money for it. Plans for a hostel with reservations for people from the Northeast are also on the anvil.
The V-C said funding had not gone up or down with the 12 plan. The additional grant from the UGC has come as a blessing, he insisted.
