|
|
|
|
|
| Latest
News |
| 23rd
March 2010 / Times of India / Hyderabad Edition |
|
Georgia Tech revives city plan
Nod for Foreign Universities Bill Raises Its Hopes
To Set Up Campus In Hyd
Hyderabad: The Foreign Educational Institutions Bill,
which was cleared by the Union cabinet a week ago, has
brought some hope to Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia
Tech), Atlanta, which had plans of setting up an off shore
campus near the city as early as 2007. In fact, the institute
has already come up with a time-frame to start its India
operations in the city, which would be in July-August
this year. Authorities have come up with a two-phased
developmental plan on research and development and pure
academics.
The institute authorities had sent across a rough outline
of their campus development plan to the state’s
higher education department and discussed it with Sreedhar
Babu, minister for higher education, K C Reddy, chairman,
Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE)
in November 2009.
The authorities told TOI that the operations of its research
and development (R&D) wing would start with the collaboration
of several players from the country’s academia and
industry.
“We are strongly committed to our goal of starting
operations in Hyderabad. We are currently in the process
of signing MoUs with leading companies in IT and energy
and gas exploration areas of research,” said the
spokesperson of the institute. He said that they were
encouraged by the vision behind the foreign university
Bill and ready to start their academic activity as soon
as possible.
A premier institute of technology in the US, Georgia Tech
had plans of setting up one of its offshore campuses in
India and had been scouting for a suitable place since
2004. In 2007, an MoU was signed between officials of
the university and the higher education department to
set up a campus on 250 acres of government land at Mucherla
village of Ranga Reddy district. While the land was identified
and acquired for the purpose in March 2009, no response
came from the university authorities after that. The government
had even sent a letter of enquiry to the university heads
on November 17, 2009 asking them to clarify whether they
were interested in the project or not. In their response,
the institute authorities said that they would first set
up their research base.
Wipro and Infosys, which have set up R&D bases in
the Atlanta campus of Georgia Tech, are expected to set
up their labs in its India campus as well.
While the infrastructure will come up on the land allotted
to the university, a full-fledged campus is likely to
come up only in 2011 academic year.
The institute authorities admitted that they had to go
slow on the project due to “economic recession”
and “uncertainty” regarding the foreign university
Bill”.
According to the institute authorities, the research centres
will focus on developing “small but high quality
programmes”. “The research will focus on cloud
computing, gas exploration, climate prediction, power
distribution and renewable energy”. The university
is expected to be helped by local industries and research
institutes in these activities.
But higher education officials said that the university
had not yet bought the 250 acres the state government
acquired for it. However, the institute said that the
faculty and students of Atlanta campus are expected to
reach the country in the next few months to flag off the
research and development activities. |
|
|
|
