Kolkata Presidency Mentor Group chair Professor Sugata Bose has said the group is exploring options to reach out to brilliant students in districts for bringing in the best brains to Presidency University.
Bose, the Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University, said they wanted to attract the best brains to Presidency University and the Mentor group intends to visit districts and reach out to meritorious students.
THE HIGHLIGHTS
1. Bose said the mentor group will make an assessment of the overall situation in the university and find out how much progress has been made after 2011.
2. Bose said while the best universities in the world are more flexible in allocating funds to retain the human resources (faculty), in India the varsities are bound by set rules by UGC (University Grants Commission).
3. Bose said that at a recent higher education consultative committee meeting in Delhi he had pointed out that all Central and state universities should be given autonomy to enable them to reach excellence.
To a question about education minister Partha Chatterjee commenting that the heritage structure of Presidency was tinkered with during renovation work, Bose said, the Mentor group will talk to the minister as well as Alumni Association and university authorities on the issue.
WHAT IS PRESIDENCY MENTOR GROUP
Presidency Mentor Group had been set up by West Bengal chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to charter a roadmap for making Presidency University a pre-eminent institution of learning in the world. The mentor group has already held talks among its members about several issues including this one. The group will discuss everything threadbare at a meeting in the end of January.
