With Gurgaon University (GU) in the works, TOI’s Rohit David spoke to Professor Shyam Menon , the founding vice-chancellor of Ambedkar University, Delhi ( AUD ), on his experience of establishing a university in Delhi to serve specific needs of students in NCR (Delhi University, being a central university, is open to students from across India), and the challenges he faced. An academic who specialised in education, with focus on curriculum, cognition and higher education, he had previously served in academic and administrative positions with distinction in MS University Baroda, DU, IGNOU and NCERT.Having served as the VC of AUD for 10 years, Menon says there is no standard operating procedure to establish a university. “There is no operational manual to establish a university. Each university is a distinct organic entity with its own origins and life trajectory. DU was a creation of a colonial government, whereas Aligarh Muslim University ( AMU ) and Banaras Hindu University ( BHU ) had distinctly different origins,” he said.AUD was established as there was a need for the NCR to have its own universities. “NCR citizens were complaining they were not getting the benefits of higher education institutions as they invariably catered to the entire country. In the 1990s, Delhi witnessed a major reorganisation in its Masterplan, as a part of which the seeds for more higher education institutes were sown. Just before state elections in 2008, AUD came into being,” he said.The most essential part of establishing a university is to have a vision and mission encoded in a concept note. Menon says, “I was clear I didn’t want it to be just another institute, but one based on equity, social justice and excellence, working equally with reason and compassion. I started with just a legislation in hand. First, I gathered a team, with whom I created a concept note containing the vision, and broad structures and contours of programmes we would offer. This, we submitted to the government. We spoke of not repeating what our formidable neighbours, JNU and DU, were doing. Our focus would be on interdisciplinary programmes in applied areas of social sciences and humanities. We came up with courses like development studies, psychosocial clinical studies, human ecology, social entrepreneurship, social design, etc. This appealed to the government.”The next step was to have top-notch faculty. “To breathe life into a university, we needed to assemble competent and dedicated faculty. Our Delhi location helped. I used to got to libraries, browse through international journals in social sciences to identify people working on South Asia, take out their contact details and lure them to AUD. We were sure to succeed, we had to have the best faculty. So, the first 25-30 faculty had to be identified. Once they were on board, more good scholars followed,” he added.The broad contours of academic programmes were designed through consultation. It was also a way to identify prospective faculty. Most courses were designed once recruitment was over. “In a way, course development and faculty identification happened iteratively. No good faculty would be ready to teach someone else’s course. For any university, professors should come first and then courses. Especially when instead of reproducing standard courses, we were reinventing social sciences and creating new, interdisciplinary ones. To attract and retain good faculty, we had to create an arrangement of concurrent appointments too,” he added.Menon said there can be some courses that attract fewer students, but one has to run these. He added, “We knew we were not running a TRP-based TV channel. Some of the first few programmes we offered did not have many takers. But we dug our heals and continued to promote these, for we were convinced they were of social need and we could manage to mobilise market demand. Eventually, the demand came.”It was not long before AUD achieved success. “Each institution should formulate its own success benchmark. A university should be rooted in its local environment. For AUD, we had set out to become a university for Delhi youth, particularly those from social margins. Yet, we’ve ended up becoming an elite institution. There are more students from private schools at AUD than from government schools. Maybe our admission criteria needs to be looked at again, or we need an effective outreach programme for government schools,” said Menon.

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