COIMBATORE: The Union ministry for human resource development's criteria for Institutions of Eminence (IoE) favours business tycoons who run universities. On the one hand, the application fee is Rs 1crore, and, on the other, the net worth of each member of the sponsoring trust must be Rs 3,000crore.The criteria for universities that could apply for the institution of eminence status were released last week. The Centre, in Union budget 2016, had said that it would recognise 20 institutions (10 government and 10 private) as IoE to see more institutions among the top 100 in global rankings. While the Centre has allocated Rs 5,000 crore that will be released over the next five years as Rs 100 crore each, it expects the private institutions to have enough money to reach the standards of institution of eminence. "The regulation clearly states that the net worth of each of the trust members should be Rs 3,000 crore. This favours only corporates," said a professor of a private deemed university in Tamil Nadu.While the financial credential of the promotors is a criterion, the MHRD has restricted the eligibility to institutions under the top 50 ranks in the national institutional ranking framework. Given these two parameters, it looks like only one private deemed university that has a strong corporate background will be eligible to apply .Educationists feel the MHRD should give importance to academic credentials. "It is a great move to bring in the concept of IoE. If we want to compete with globally recognised institutions, we should identify institutions with the capability within the country ," said pro chancellor of Symbiosis University , Pune, Vidya Yeravdekar ."I am sure the confusion over the eligibility criteria can be sorted with dialogue," she said.The Rs 3,000crore net value of promotors is a revised criterion as the MHRD earlier fixed it at Rs 8,000crore. "We had objected to this, and the value was reduced to Rs 3,000crore. If my net value is Rs 3,000crore, our university would have been among the top 100 global institutions long ago," said a member of the management of a deemed university .However, educationists say the MHRD can allow companies with net value of Rs 3,000crore as a criterion. "There are institutions that have support from corporates. That is an acceptable criterion, but expecting individuals to be owners of such large corpus is unfair," said the educationist.

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