Virginia tech plans R&D centre

Updated on: Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Irked over the inadvertent delay in the clearance of the Foreign Education Providers’ Bill, some of the global varsities are keen to set up their base in India through innovation centres.

These centres, which aim to provide the necessary base for research and development activity in the country, are being set up as stand-alone units of the universities.

Many varsities, including Virginia Tech of the US and a few from Malaysia and Australia, are exploring the option to take their baby steps into India through small R&D centres city. In fact, the first innovation centre of the Virginia Tech is all set to go live in a couple of months in the private special economic zone (SEZ), near Chennai being developed by MARG.

“The centre of Virginia Tech University will go live on January 26. This will initially employ about 50 researchers who will be working on nanotechnology and others,” said Mr G.R.K. Reddy, CMD of MARG group. The SEZ has earmarked about six lakh square feet of space for such innovation centres.
“We are also in tying with a few other Malay-sian and Australian varsities who are keen to set up such innovation centres in India,” he added.

It is reported that this move by foreign varsities is a result of the extraordinary delay in approving the Bill in the Parliament. Though the first draft of the Foreign Education Providers’ Bill was first drafted in 1995, it underwent a series of revisions with the final version getting approved by the Union Cabinet only in March 2010.

A parliamentary standing committee has submitted its final report to the Union HRD ministry and minister in-charge Kapil Sibal hopes to introduce the bill in Parliament in winter session starting from November end.

With the Central government outlining an ambitious target of achieving up to 30 per cent of gross enrollment ratio in higher education by 2017, end of the 12th five-year plan, many foreign varsities, especially from the US, are eyeing India as the next big opportunity.

Dismissing such innovation centres as a pressure tactics of varsities for an early passage of the bill, Dr M. Anandakrishnan, former Anna University vice-chancellor and chairman-IIT Kanpur said, “Many varsities have evinced plans for such research centres but they have not figured out a business model for that.”

However, a few others in the academic community feel that the Bill could give an opportunity for bright students to get quality education at a nominal cost.

Virginia tech plans R&D centre

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