KOLKATA: Presidency Mentor Group Chair Professor Sugata Bose today said the group was 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 will intend to visit districts and reach out to meritorious students.
“We must ensure the students come to know about the details regarding the subjects and courses on offer at Presidency. The modalities can be chalked out in due course,” the Mentor Group Chair told reporters on the sidelines of the Convocation of Jadavpur University here.
“We have to bring the talents,” he said. Presidency Mentor Group had been set up by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to charter a roadmap for making Presidency University as a pre-eminent institution of learning in the world.
Bose said the mentor group will make assessment on the overall situation in the university, how much progress had been made after 2011.
“One thing I can say, there had been no political influence in any faculty recruitment since 2011-12 and everything had been done on purely academic merit,” he commented.
Bose said while the best universities in the world are more flexible in allocating fund to retain the human resources (faculty), in India the varsities are bound by set rules by UGC.
“While the Centre can allocate fund for brick and mortar (infrastructure), all professors and assistant professors are paid as per UGC directives,” he said hinting the situation should change.
Bose said 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.
“The mentor group has already held talks among its members about several issues including this one,” he said.
“We will discuss everything threadbare at a meeting in the end of January,” he said.
— PTI