State policy to educate rural students under guidance of teachers from leading varsities

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday that her government is coming up with a policy under which professors and teachers of leading universities in the state will offer lectures at other universities of the state as well.

While inaugurating the second campus of Presidency University at New Town, Banerjee said: "We are formulating a scheme to depute teachers from Presidency and

Jadavpur universities to deliver lectures at the rural universities of our state. It will be an

honor for our rural students to attend classes by the best teachers. We have come up with as many as 28 universities since 2011 and work is on to come up with 10 more universities."

Banerjee said her government plans to come up with an education hub in New Town where Presidency and St. Xaviers College have

already come up with new campuses.

"We have also given land to Jadavpur University, Calcutta University and Netaji Subhas Open University at the same place. Land, whose estimated cost is more than Rs 300 crore, has been given free to the universities as our government wants educational advancement in the real sense of the term," she said.

The chief minister said a day would come when universities in Bengal such as Jadavpur and Presidency would attain the standard of excellence matching that of Harvard and Oxford.

"I am hopeful that a day will come when students from our state will not have to to foreign countries to get higher education," she said.

The second campus of Presidency University will have advanced study

centres including school of astrophysics, school of biotechnology, school of public policy and school of informatics.

The classes are expected to start by July. A senior varsity official said: "We also hope to start a school of comparative literature soon."

The official said in the next five years, Presidency would be among the top 10 institutes in the Union Human Resource Development ministry's National Institutional Ranking Framework.

Presidency is at present ranked between 101 and 150 on the list as a university.