New Delhi:
The Centre has issued a Letter of Intent (LoI) to grant the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) a deemed university status five years after the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry first mooted the proposal of developing into an institute of national importance.
With the tag of a deemed university, IIMC which presently offers postgraduate diploma courses in journalism, advertising and public relations, would also be able to launch courses at the post-graduate level and award MPhil and PhD degrees. It could also advise the government in framing media and communication policies and develop a wing that can function as a think-tank, an official said as reported by the Economic Times.
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"China also has a national media university, this move could be a game-changer in media education. This can really help students to take academics in media seriously," said IIMC Director General KG Suresh.
The I&B Ministry had started working out the modalities and the draft bill to establish IIMC as an “Institute of National Importance” in 2013. The efforts were intensified in 2017, when in May, the institute sent an application to the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, following which the ministry had sent it to University Grants Commission (UGC) for its advice.
In the letter of intent issued to IIMC on November 15, the HRD ministry said that an expert committee visited IIMC and its regional campus in Dhenkanal in May 2018and assessed information about the other four campuses through PowerPoint presentations, after which it recommended the letter of intent to be issued. The report of the UGC expert committee was placed before the commission in which it was decided to recommend IIMC to be a deemed university under the de-novo ('De Novo' refers to an institution which focuses on teaching and research in emerging areas of knowledge) category.
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“For the institute to be a deemed university, IIMC has to upgrade its campus to start at least five PG departments in emerging areas of knowledge within three years and also have to submit details about the syllabi for the proposed courses, research programmes and recruit adequate faculty members and create necessary infrastructure such as a central library, sports areas according to UGC regulations,” the note from IIMC said.
