Character of an Impactful University/Institution

Ivy leagues universities/ institution are differentiated by many extraordinary things they do. Each of them are very fascinating to know as they become benchmarks of how a great institution of higher learning should be run. 

They are multidisciplinary research university and run like an enterprise, not with profit motive but for making high impact. They are truly impactful in the sense that their research create disciplines of knowledge, innovations change societies and establish corporations leading to creation of millions of job world-wide and trigger economic growth of nations. 

A noticeable one is the scale at which they operate, see few recent data here:

• Harvard University (32000 students), 
• Cornell University (23,600 students)
• Columbia University (39000 students)
• University of Pennsylvania (25,860 students)
• Penn State University (98,783 students)
• The Ohio State University (66,444 students)
• University of Pittsburgh (34,934 students)
• Rutgers University (67,556 students)

They maintain a decent Teacher-Student ratio of 1:10 (average), so faculty size can be visualised in that proportion.

In India, a vast majority of institutions/ universities have fewer than 500 faculty and fewer than 5000 students, while from the list of top 200 in the world, over 90% have more than 1000 faculty and more than 10000 students.

Most of the Indian higher education institutions (IHEI) have been nurtured as single discipline/ single campus entity hence remain small.

There are 130 'Institutes of National Importance', operational with single discipline and single campus. IITs/NITs are technology focused, while IIITs/ IISERs/ISIs are further narrow focused. They operate at tiny to medium scale ie  1000 to 10000 students size. An exception is state level technical universities (mostly affiliation universities) have grown big initially and now broken into many (eg UPTU & JNTU).

National Education Policy (NEP-2020) rightly insists on India to nurture more ‘research’ universities and to become multidisciplinary, each having up to 25000 students. Henceforth, all universities/institutions are encouraged to diversify assessing the growth potential and become a multi-discipline campuses.

NiRF top 20 may be given special package for diversification and adopt a ‘New Format’ to operate globally under ‘Institute of Eminence’ status.

In few cases, integrating or merging two co-located institutions into one entity may also be explored if there is synergy. Together, they eventually become multi-disciplinary impactful institution. For example, IIT Delhi, ISI and JNU are close campuses and it must be examined how these institutions are brought together under one governance to achieve synergy and generate bigger outcome. Separately they (JNU & IITD) operate at a moderate scale, with each having 500+ faculty and 9000+ students (approx). ISI is tiny in size. If they are unified under one governance & administrative set-up, together, they can aim to grow and have 2500 faculty and 25000 students during the next 5 years’ time frame. Such a capacity would allow aggressive expansion offering variety of programs in wide range of academic disciplines (from Technology to Liberal Arts) for undergrad to post-graduate both.

This idea must be experimented in select cases in the country and these institutions should be given total autonomy to operate at global level with ‘Institute of Eminence’ status. As global entity, they eventually would strive for a 50:50 mix of national and international community in the campus at a time.  They can gradually become self-sustaining and resource rich.

World top class institutions are multi-disciplinary campuses and operate at large scale, often self-sustaining and grow with corpus. Let us take few examples here of the top one, in North America, Europe and Asia.

MIT is rated number one in the world, so obviously it's top in North America. It is a benchmark institution to emulate– as it is rated top, not only, in ‘Technology’ but also in ‘Social Sciences’ as well. As of October 2020, there are 97 Nobel laureates having affiliated with MIT (34 in Physics, 16 in Chemistry, 12 Medicine, 34 Economics and 1in Peace). In 2019, MIT generated a revenue of 3.9 Billion dollars and spent 3.7 Billion dollars

National University of Singapore (NUS), is consistently ranked as Asia's number-1 university for several years now. Spread across 371 Acres land, NUS runs academic programs (UG+PG) in 100s of disciplines across Arts and Social Sciences, Business Computing, Dentistry, Duke–NUS Medical School, Engineering, Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Law, Medicine, Music, Public Health, Public Policy, Science, University Scholars Programme and Yale-NUS College. NUS staff comprises 2,555 Faculty Members, 2,999 Research Staff, 2,493 Executive and Professional Staff, and 2,391 General Staff. Total students: 38,596 (UG+PG) (32% international); Annual budget: Fee collected S$8.7 Billion; Grants S$14 Billion; Expenditure S$17 Billion, Endowment S$4.39 billion (2019)

Other inspiring example is Cambridge University which is top rated university alongwith Oxford. Having a total 23,247 students coming from over 147 different countries; of these, 12354 Undergraduates and 10893 Postgraduates students (2019 figures). It has 11,960 members of staff employed in academic, academic-related, contract research, technical, clerical and secretarial roles. As of September 2018, Cambridge had 298,103 living alumni, with significant numbers in the UK, China, USA, Australia and Hong Kong. Among alumni includes 109 Nobel Prize Laureates, 47 Heads of State, 190 Olympic Medallists. The university is made up of 31 constituent Colleges. Its income £2,192m (2019); Funding body grants £181.9m; Academic fees and support grants £320.2m; Research grants and contracts £592.4m; Examination and assessment services £478.5m; Publishing services £334.0m; Other income £133.4m; Endowment and investment income £151.6m while Net assets at 31 July 2019: £5,145m.

These institutions/universities are ‘enterprising’ in character, irrespective of whether they public funded or privately owned; with ample resources in hands, they are able to host and nurture talents   

They produce graduates who, for example, become scientists, do amazing Molecular Biology research, do amazing Zoological research, find path-breaking Machine Learning algorithms which push cancer research forward decades; they find new ways of doing Behavioural Science studies which help decode many mysteries of human behaviour

From these and other best in class institutions, it is possible to draw a prescriptive template having few generic institutional set up and adoptable by others. This template would ask one to set very ambitious agenda and nurture a vibrant organizational culture. 

Indian institutions chosen to operate in the new template, should have a compelling business case to undertake this ambitious journey. At present, most of them are a mere teaching shop with negiligeable research impact. India should liberally extend its high ranking universities/ institutions full autonomy so that they emerge an empowered entity, decide everything that take to compete globally. Operating at global level means offering programs for global audience with flexible academic models to become a true International University. The new entity would require to operate with annual budget several time higher (Rupees vs Dollar difference) and build a similar level of corpus in due course. Adopting a new financial model that guarantees enough revenue flow and gradually reach a stage of ‘no grant’ seeking to resource rich entity. This will allow them to develop world class infrastructure, offer comparable compensation and attract best faculty and host world class scholars. Hosting few Nobel Laureates in the campus during the next 5 year should be part of the strategic agenda. This will create a very inspiring academic environment around the campus. 

They would 

• showcase the power of diversity (student & faculty) with enabling mechanisms
• encourage faculty to involve in large collaborative projects with global partners
• introduce new mechanism that attract aspiring students from all parts of the world; nurture a vibrant learning environment to enhance ‘Students experience’ and empower them to become future leaders
• empower faculty to evolve as ‘Thought Leaders’ and produce ‘Strategy papers’ on key national issues time to time
• nurture ‘Think Tank’ to feed select GoI program (eg Make in India or Digital India)
• develop several ‘National Resource Centre’ in important areas (eg Smart Cities, Digitization, Public Health, All Bios, Urban Planning, Diplomacy etc.)
• host resident ‘Professor of Practice’ (PoP) that allows industry stalwarts in campus as per their availability
• expand vertically and horizontally - around disciplines where economic and social influence of  Technology is deep and wide
• introduce PPP models wherever there is scope (Labs, Sports complex, Hospital, Library, Guest House & other infrastructure)
• encourage participation in prestigious international forums (World Economic Forum, UN bodies, Olympics etc.)
• aim to produce national/ international sportsperson on regular basis – and soon few Olympian and few World Champions
• Showcase as a true ‘Smart Campus’