West Bengal has added over 60 new universities in 15 years; several born during covid

NEW DELHI: Over the past decade-and-a-half, West Bengal has added 62 new institutions of higher education.

More than half of these – 37 – are universities and Institutions of National Importance (INI) for general and technical education, set up between 2008 and 2022. The rest are medical colleges, affiliated to the West Bengal University of Health Sciences (WBUHS). These include the centrally-funded ESIC Medical College in Joka, Kolkata.

The 37 include 22 public universities and 12 private ones. Nine of them started operating during the Covid-19 pandemic, over 2020-22, and for the initial period, taught online. Most of them switched over to offline classes in 2022 but are confronted with fresh challenges with teacher recruitment and lack of infrastructure.

The types of institutions to come up run the gamut – from the highly-specialised research centre, National Institute of Biomedical Genomics at Kalyani, to the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Kalyani for technical education; over a dozen new medical colleges, including the centrally-funded All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Kalyani; and numerous universities, some of which are upgraded colleges; some for women and some, set up to address local needs.

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West Bengal University: Born during Covid

Rani Rashmoni Green University came up in 2020 and offered postgraduate programmes in environmental science and chemistry only to begin with. In 2021, also mid-Covid-pandemic, it launched PG programmes in computer science, nutrition and public health, English and Bengali. The first batches were all taught online initially. Each programme has 30 seats and currently, the university has 282 students.

“This is a green university and we are environmentally conscious. We will soon be adding doctoral programmes,” said Ajay Lakra, law officer, at Rani Rashmoni Green University, adding, “at present, we have three departments in Tarakeshwar College and three more departments in Singur government college.” The permanent campus of the university is coming up in Singur.

Alipurduar College was upgraded to Alipurduar University in 2020.

As typical of most new universities, they faced shortage of staff and facilities. Development work continued at Alipurduar during the tumult of the pandemic with “adequate” grants from the state, said Mohendra Nath Roy, its first vice-chancellor. For example, it got Rs. 5 crore and an additional Rs. 70 lakh for modernising a pond for the study of pisciculture. But it needed teachers as well.

“We requested the government that several posts in the university need to be created and many vacancies need to be filled up at the earliest,” he said. During his tenure, which ended on June 8, the university launched 14 PG and eight management programmes. Ten colleges currently affiliated to the North Bengal University will shift to Alipurduar University whose roll-strength is already 12,000.

Biswa Bangla Biswavidyalay came up in 2020 as a liberal arts university and it too began online. It is now operating offline but from rented premises and on the strength of guest teachers.

Situated in Birbhum district, it is also known as Bolpur University and offers master’s programmes in Bengali, English, maths and history. Around 15 colleges of Birbhum district will shift to it from Burdwan University.

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WB: New women’s universities

The new universities to come up since 2008 include two women’s institutions – Diamond Harbour Women’s University in 2013 and Kanyashree University, Krishnanagar, in 2020.

Diamond Harbour Women’s University serves not only women students from every corner of West Bengal but also ones from Assam, Tripura and Odisha. A major draw is the training programmes for various competitive exams the university conducts for its students.

“The students not only do their masters but also get trained for cracking various competitive exams like that of WBCSC or West Bengal Civil Service Commission, railways and also TET [Teacher Eligibility Test]. Before they appear for the actual exam, they appear in a mock exam here and students who do well get scholarships to train at Rice [coaching centre in West Bengal]. So the training is free of cost,” said Sonali Nashkar, assistant professor of history.

Nashkar is also the placement officer at the university.

Sonali Nashkar, assistant professor, History

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The university has requested the state government for grants for expanding the hostels, organise better security facilities and a library. “Though no untoward incident has happened on the campus we are concerned about the security of our students. We also asked the government to provide us with the transport facility that we had before Covid,” said Debashish Mitra, assistant professor, of political science.