Clustering is a promising mannequin to realize a crucial mass in a college to invigorate research
National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) envisions establishing massive multidisciplinary universities to advertise research directed to unravel up to date nationwide issues, and offers the choice of establishing clusters of upper schooling institutes. Cluster-based universities would improve school energy, each when it comes to numbers and variety of disciplines, and facilitate conduct of research on actual life issues.
Mainstay of research
Doctoral college students are the mainstay of research in universities. In many nations together with India, universities additionally conduct off-campus doctoral programmes in research laboratories. The Indian Institute of Science pioneered a variant of off-campus programme referred to as External Registration programme which enabled staff working in laboratories or industries to register for a doctoral programme beneath the supervision of its school and perform a significant a part of research at their office. The exterior registration programme has now been adopted by extra greater schooling Institutes. The subject of research taken upunder off-campus programmes is all the time of relevance to the office. One might go a step additional and make workplaces pursuing knowledge-based work part of a cluster-based college.
Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), Mumbai, established in 2005, by the Department of Atomic Energy, is a cluster-based college and I’ve had an extended affiliation with it. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California, U.S., is a federally funded research and growth centre managed by California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The mental atmosphere and identification of JPL are profoundly formed by its function as part of Caltech. A big laboratory, JPL has about 6,000 full time staff, and Caltech was positioned eighth within the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by Shanghai Rankings in 2020.
SOKENDAI (the Graduate University for Advanced Studies) established in Japan in 1988 and operating solely doctoral programmes, brings collectively a number of research establishments and museums such because the National Museum of Japanese History.
The Paris-Saclay University acquired its authorized standing in 2019, although it has been functioning as a “university system” since 2015. The college shares 275 laboratories with a number of research organisations, together with CEA (Atomic Energy and Alternate Energies Commission), INSERM (French Institute of Health and Medical Research) and others. Though simply accredited, Paris-Saclay college was positioned fourteenth in ARWU by Shanghai Rankings in 2020. It is now one of many Europe’s greatest research universities.
Common goal
All nations have their distinctive authorized framework for establishing universities, and due to this fact, whereas there are variations within the construction of HBNI, SOKENDAI, Paris-Saclay University, and Caltech, the target is to learn from synergies. It allows conducting educational research on focussed areas. It additionally allows pursuit of educational research and post-academic research in the identical college, and ends in quicker deployment of outcomes of research. Benefits could be seen from the expansion and success of HBNI, which was ranked fourteenth a,pmg universities by NIRF-2020. Nature Index ranked HBNI at second place amongst all educational establishments in India through the interval October 1, 2019 to 30 September 2020. Another instance of a cluster-based college in India is the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research established in 2011. Nature Index has ranked it at eighth place in India.
Different ideas
India must earnestly pursue this mannequin. Institutions for clustering in a college could be chosen based mostly on completely different ideas; some examples may very well be institutes managed by a Department or a Ministry or a Public Trust, institutes situated in shut proximity, institutes pursuing related aims and many others. Many business associations have established research centres and extra may very well be inspired to do.
I’ll like so as to add a observe of warning as nicely. In a cluster-based college, the ‘rewards system’ has to recognise all facets of expertise and all knowledge-based output. One might recall the recommendation given by P. B. Medawar to younger scientists that “technicians are colleagues in a collaborative research”, and “despite their paper degrees”, younger scientists have rather a lot to study research. This recommendation is extra necessary at this time when complexity of experimental services is rising, and needn’t solely competent technicians, however extremely competent engineers, referred to as scientific officers in nationwide laboratories, for his or her design, development, secure operation and upkeep. Scientific officers have deep insights about research capabilities of services.
For shifting away from single-discipline establishments to multi-disciplinary universities, clustering is a promising mannequin to realize a crucial mass in a college to invigorate research.
(R. B. Grover is Emeritus professor, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, and Member, Atomic Energy Commission, Government of India..)
