?We aim to match Ivy League standards by 2020?

?At BITS, when we teach entrepreneurship to students, the focus is not so much on wealth creation but more on employment generation,? says Professor BN Jain, the vice-chancellor of BITS Pilani, while talking about entrepreneurship and social development an educational institute should focus on. One of the finest private universities in the country, BITS is now aiming to raise its standard to match an Ivy League institute by 2020. Difficult? Well, may be not if you plan and implement seriously. In an interaction with FE?s Vikram Chaudhary, Prof Jain discussed these aspects and more about the institute. Excerpts:

What are these strategies (Mission 2012 and Vision 2020) to raise the institute?s excellence to the next level and what is the meaning of next level? Is it the global standards or the standards of the IITs?

BITS has been recognised as the number one private technical university in the country. But in the changing world scenario, BITS needed to further develop a well defined strategy to realise its dream of being one of the leading universities in the world. The next level, to us, means that we intent to be among the top 3 in the country in the normal evaluation process over the next three years; we plan to get into the top 20 in Asia in the next 10 years; and we plan to get into the top 100 in the world in, say, the next 20-30 years. But here I must add that we don’t intend to use hierarchy as the benchmark, but global standards as the benchmark.

You were doing well anyway, so how did these plans come about?

Well, just to go a little into the past, when the BITS?s new chancellor, Kumar Mangalam Birla, took over the mantle from his grand uncle KK Birla towards end-2008, as a part of his own vision, the need was felt to take BITS global. And through an intense collaborative process, involving faculty, students, and (non-teaching) staff from all four campuses, a shape was given to a set of clearly articulated goals around six key domains: faculty development, curriculum development and pedagogy, research, infrastructure and facilities, governance and administration, and quality of life. This later became BITS?s strategic plan and Mission 2012 and Vision 2020 were born.

But, as is with every plan, implementation was the key. So a formal structure was created to implement the goals. The chancellor and vice-chancellor took the role of project sponsors; the campus directors, deputy directors and the advisor to the chancellor constituted the steering team; a project office to track, review and support the project was constituted; and task forces, each with faculty from each of the four campuses, were formed.

So it is actually being implemented?

Implementation is well under way with some path breaking wins. Just a few of the more high-impact initiatives under implementation are: a comprehensive faculty development programme (a new performance management process that will be comparable with some of the best universities in the world); over 30 programmes offered by BITS at all its campuses have been benchmarked, each with three of the best global universities in the programme; modernisation of the Pilani campus is under review and a master plan will be prepared in 2011; a comprehensive enterprise resource planning system, covering the entire student lifecycle is under implementation; to name a few.

And what is your investment in the initiative?

As we recently announced in the BITS Global Meet at Gurgaon, we will invest Rs100 crore primarily for four initiatives, namely 1) chairing professorships, 2) undergraduate freeships, 3) towards improvement of ?life on campus? for students, including sports facilities, and 4) signature building at Pilani to house research labs and centres for excellence.

How is BITS emphasising on the need for research, entrepreneurship and social development?

Our faculty is engaged in PhD-driven research, which is funded in large parts by government agencies whose mandate is to fund research. And our PhD programmes are significantly supported by these research centres that we have established.

As far as entrepreneurship is concerned, we take steps to sensitise the graduate classes that entrepreneurship is an option that they should consider at the time when they look for placement. Also, we have a centre whose focus is entrepreneurship development and they also support the launch of, what you might call, start-ups, but by way of funds by way of knowledge and expertise required to start a company. And they also support to work with young entrepreneurs to find some financial resources from outside BITS. The fact that Pilani is located in a rural area offers a challenge of a different kind. Because creating start-ups in Noida or Navi Mumbai is one thing, and creating start-ups that provide for some kind of gainful employment for people in these rural areas is another. There is a BPO that operates out of the town of Pilani and it has some 50-odd people. But then you may say that BPOs are dime a dozen, but then how many BPOs operate out a rural area such as Pilani. So the focus is not so much on wealth creation but more on employment generation. And this is just one example of people in rural areas involved with such start-ups.