With a Bill being passed in Rajya Sabha to declare the National Institute of Design (NID) as an 'institute of national importance', the institute is mulling expansion of its teaching and research activities. Post such a conferment, the premier design institute can now award under graduate and post graduate degrees, apart from MPhil and PhD programmes.
According to Pradyumna Vyas, director of NID, the conferment under an act of Parliament has made NID the 41st such institute in the country.
"Only the IITs, NITs, AIIMS and IISER, among others are institutes of national importance. It is a great step forward being taken by the country towards development of design education and research. We are now gearing up to make the most of such a conferment," said Vyas.
Established in 1965, NID was so far only able to confer post graduate diploma. However, post passing of the bill, it can now award degrees.
"There was certain limitation as long as we were not able to award degrees. We were not able to get the desired number of quality students from different strata of society. Moreover, international doctoral programmes students were also choosing institutes in cities like Pune and Vadodara over us. However, we will now be able to tap the global students crowd in the design arena," said Vyas.
The institute, according to Vyas, is now mulling expansion in terms of faculty strength and student seats for various of its programs.
Moreover, Vyas said that NID may also look at opportunities to raise funds if needed. "We have a pretty health corpus as an institute. We haven't yet calculated the financial requirements that the expansion steps would need. But if and when needed, we will approach the government for the same in near future," Vyas added.
However, it needs to be mentioned here that any institute that gets conferred with this status also receives special recognition as well as necessary funding from the government.
