GS Paper II 

News Excerpt:

Central Government approves fourth phase roll-out of Global Initiative on Academic Network (GIAN) scheme.

About the Scheme:

• The GIAN scheme aims to attract international scientists and entrepreneurs to India's higher education institutions, enhancing the country's academic resources, accelerating quality reform, and elevating India's scientific and technological capacity to global excellence.
• The scheme will include all IITs, IIMs, Central Universities, IISc Bangalore, IISERs, NITs, and IIITs, followed by good State Universities with significant spinoffs.
• Foreign faculty will be involved as distinguished, adjunct, visiting, or professors of practice, delivering short or semester-long courses.
• The Ministry of Education (MOE) is preparing to restart the fourth phase of the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) eight years after its brief discontinuation during the COVID period, following a recommendation from the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA).
• The funding for the courses by the Institutes shall be partially supported through various schemes including but not limited to-
• the Plan / Non-Plan Funds of the Institute
• other designated funds from TEQIP, UGC, AICTE, DST, DSIR and other Government entities
• sponsorships from various agencies like industry / foundations
• fees from participants and other sources

Key findings about the scheme:

• Since the inception of GIAN, the Central government has spent at least ₹126 crore in payment to support foreign faculty's travel and honorarium.
• Each foreign faculty member is paid $8000 for a week of teaching and $12,000 for conducting a two-week course.
• Since 2015-16, 1,612 foreign faculty members have visited India to deliver courses from 59 countries.
• 39% of 1,772 courses were delivered in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campuses, while 241 (10.8%) took place in State Universities. The rest were conducted at Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), Indian Institute of Sciences (IISC), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), management institutes, Central universities, and All India Council of Technical Education’s engineering colleges.
• Up to 41.4% of academicians visiting India belonged to the U.S., while the rest consisted of experts from the U.K., Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Nordic countries, China, Japan and Taiwan, ASEAN countries, and other countries.
• Up to 72,000 Indian students directly benefitted.

Way forward:

• There is a need to take more efforts for renowned faculty to visit State universities and smaller colleges, which have little exposure to high-quality lecturership.
• The MoE has now insisted in phase four approval process that those experts who will allow video recording and optional web-casting of their course will be given preference.
• MoE is also planning to make the repository of GIAN lectures available to universities across India through an online consortium to be used as a teaching and assessment tool.

Mains PYQ

Q. The quality of higher education in India requires major improvement to make it internationally competitive. Do you think that the entry of foreign educational institutions would help improve the quality of technical and higher education in the country. Discuss. (UPSC 2015)