Ministry of Human Resource Development Schemes
RISE
- Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE) was launched to revitalize the infrastructure of higher educational institutions with a total investment of one lakh crore in the upcoming 4 years.
- It will provide low cost funds to all government higher educational institutions to promote higher education.
- It will cover all centrally-funded institutes (CFIs) including central universities, IITs, IIMs, NITs and IISERs.
- It will be financed via a restructured ―Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) that has been constituted as a non-bank finance company.
- Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will get largest part of loans on offer under RISE Scheme.
HEFA
• It was set up by central govt. as Section 8 company (company having charitable objectives) in 2017.
- HEFA will mobilize funds in market and will provide 10 year loans to all centrally-run institutes.
- For the mobilization of corpus of Rs. 1 lakh crore, central govt. will provide Rs. 8,500 crore.
- Canara Bank will bear the remaining amount as a partner for setting up of HEFA.
- Target – All the projects sanctioned by HEFA are to get completed before 2022.
- It will directly release the sanctioned amount to vendors or contractors only after the certification of executing agency and educational institution.
- CFIs will have to repay the borrowed amount (loans) in a time frame of over 10 years.
Prime Minister Research Fellowship Scheme
- PMRF scheme is aimed at attracting the talent pool of the country to doctoral (Ph.D.) programs of IITs and IISc for carrying out research in cutting edge science and technology domains.
- Selected candidates will be offered admission to Ph.D. program in one of IITs/IISc with a fellowship of Rs.70,000/ month for the first 2 years, Rs.75,000/month for the 3rd, and Rs.80,000/month in the 4th and 5th years.
- Apart from this, a research grant of Rs.2 lakh/year will be provided to each of the Fellows for a period of 5 years to cover their academic contingency expenses and for foreign/national travel expenses.
- It will be implemented for period of 7 years beginning 2018-19 and Maximum of 3000 Fellows would be selected in three year period, beginning 2018-19.
Samagra Shiksha Scheme
- It is a centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) subsumes 3 erstwhile CSS schemes such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).
- It is an integrated Scheme for school education extending support to States from pre-school to senior secondary levels for the first time.
- It is an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class XII.
- It aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels of school education.
- It envisages the ̳school‘ as a continuum from pre-school, primary, upper primary, secondary to senior secondary levels.
IMPRESS Scheme
- Impactful Policy Research in Social Science (IMPRESS) has been launched to promote policy research in social science.
- The objective is to identify and fund research proposals in social sciences with maximum impact on the governance and society.
- Under this, 1,500 research projects will be funded for 2 years.
- The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) has been entrusted with the task of implementing and monitoring the scheme.
- Some of the identified domains under the scheme are – State and democracy, Urban transformation, Media culture and society, Employment skills and rural transformation, Governance innovation and public policy, innovation, Agriculture and rural development, Social media and society, Politics law and economics.
SPARC Scheme
- A webportal for the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) was recently launched for promotion of academic and research collaboration.
- It aims at improving the research ecosystem of India‘s higher educational institutions by facilitating academic and research collaborations between Indian and foreign institutions.
- The quality benchmark for SPARC is that only such Indian institutes can apply which are in top 100 NIRF ranking or top 100 NIRF subject ranking.
- For foreign universities the benchmark is either top 500 of QS ranking or top 200 of QS subject ranking.
- IIT-Khargapur is the national Coordinating Institute to implement the SPARC programme.
LEAP Initiative
- Leadership for Academicians Programme (LEAP) is a flagship leadership development training programme.
- The objective is mainly to train academic heads, who are likely to assume leadership roles in the future.
- Its focus group is second level academic functionaries in public funded higher education institutions.
- It would include both domestic and foreign training in managerial skills such as problem-solving, handling stress, team building work, conflict management, developing communication skills etc.
- The implementation will be through top ranked universities and top 100 global ranked foreign universities.
ARPIT initiative
- Annual Refresher Programme in Teaching (ARPIT) is a unique initiative of online professional development of 15 lakh higher education faculty using the MOOCs platform SWAYAM.
- National Resource Centres (NRC) will be identified to prepare online training material.
- NRC will be in a mixed range of institutions such as, Central Universities, IISc, IUCAA, IITs, IISERs, NITs, IGNOU, State Universities, UGC‘s Human Resource Development Centres (HRDCs) and National Institutes for Technical Teachers Training.
- It will focus on latest developments in the discipline, new & emerging trends, pedagogical improvements and methodologies for transacting revised curriculum.
- SWAYAM – Study Webs of Active learning for Young Aspiring Minds is a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platform launched to offer various online courses for school education and higher education.
Pradhan Mantri Vidya Lakshmi Karyakram
- The scheme aims to provide a fully IT based Student Financial Aid Authority to administer and monitor Scholarship as well Educational Loan Schemes.
- Accordingly, Vidya Lakshmi Portal, a first of its kind portal for students seeking education load was set up.
- It provides single window electronic platform for students to access information and prepares applications for Educational Loans and Government Scholarships.
- This portal has been developed under the guidance of Department of Financial Services, (Ministry of Finance), Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Human Resource Development) and Indian Banks Association (IBA).
- The portal has been developed and being maintained by NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Limited.
- The portal also provides linkages to National Scholarship Portal.
NSDL e-Gov
- NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Limited (NSDL e-Gov) was originally setup as a Depository in 1995.
- It works closely with various Government agencies for designing, managing and implementing e-Governance Projects.
- It has been appointed as a Registrar of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to facilitate registration of residents for obtaining Aadhaar and has been engaged as the technology partner for GST.
Institutes of Eminence Scheme
- Institutes of Eminence are institutions which are expected to make into top 500 world rankings in a decade.
- They have complete freedom to decide the curricula, hire domestic and foreign faculty and fix a fee structure of their choice.
- It comprises 10 public and 10 private educational institutions which will be selected based on the recommendations of Empowered committee.
- The Government has recently shortlisted 6 Institutions of Eminence (IoEs) including 3 from Public Sector and 3 from Private Sector.
- Public Sector – Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT Bombay and IIT, Delhi.
- Private Sector – Jio Institute (Reliance Foundation), Pune, Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences, Pilani, Rajasthan; and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka.
- Rs. 1000 cr. grant will be given only to public institutions and no funds will be given to private institutions.
- These Institutions shall also be provided with autonomy
- to admit foreign students up to 30% of admitted students;
- to recruit foreign faculty upto 25% of faculty strength;
- to offer online courses upto 20% of its programmes;
- to enter into academic collaboration with top 500 in the world ranking Institutions without permission of UGC;
- free to fix and charge fees from foreign students without restriction;
- flexibility of course structure in terms of number of credit hours and years to take a degree;
- complete flexibility in fixing of curriculum and syllabus, among others.
Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan
- RUSA is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to increase enrolment in higher education by 30% by 2020.
- It also seeks to increase the spending on higher education by the State Governments by providing strategic funding to eligible State higher educational institutions.
- The funding would flow from the central ministry through the State/UT to the State Higher Education Councils before reaching the identified institutions.
- During its 1st phase, central assistance to States has been provided for creation of one Model Degree College each in 60 Educationally Backward Districts.
- Educationally Backward Districts are those districts where Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education was less than the national average of 12.4% based on 2001 census data.
- During its 2nd phase, RUSA focuses on opening new Model Degree Colleges in ̳Aspirational Districts‘, in unserved & underserved districts in North Eastern and Himalayan States.
- Aspirational Districts are identified by NITI Aayog on the basis of composite index.
- The parameters under the index includes,
- Deprivation enumerated under Socio-Economic Caste Census,
- Health & Nutrition, Education performance indicators
- Basic Infrastructure.
- BHUVAN – RUSA PORTAL – The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of ISRO has developed a mobile application for uploading geo-tagged photographs and associated details captured by the educational institutions in this portal as part of the implementation of RUSA.
