It’s taken Fr Paul Fernandes, a Jesuit priest in Bhubaneswar four years to get clearance for the setting up of the state’s first Jesuit university making it the fourth Catholic run in the country. The idea for the new college conceived four years ago came to fruition recently after it was approved by Odisha’s legislative assembly after a lengthy debate culminating with the passing of the Xavier University Bill 2013.
The Bill empowers the state to reserve 50 per cent seats in a private university for students of Odisha, and Xavier University (XU) will be the first one to implement it. Vice chancellor of the new Xavier University and director of the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB), Fr Fernandes sees this as “a unique feature. No other private university in the country has such a provision. We have done it because of our commitment to the state.” He maintained both institutions would remain
separate entities Though the university will be ready by December the first batch of students will begin the academic year next year. While XIMB has been catering to the management and business studies since 1987, XU will have the science and humanities as part of its curriculum. Fr Fernandes believes strengthening arts, science,
cultural and media education was important in terms of Odisha’s needs. He also revealed that the Jesuits were looking at the possibility of expanding to other places
within the country in the next phase of the university. Odisha’s higher education minister Badri NaravanPatra supported XU saying that as the university was committed to providing quality education, admission would be determined primarily based on marks or grades obtained during qualifying examinations and achievements in co-curricular and extracurricular activities and entrance exams. ST, SC and girls would be given a higher preference during the admissions.
The Odisha assembly has so far approved of
five private universities Sri Sri Ravi Shankar University,
Vedanta University, ICFAI University and
Centurion University of Technology and Management.
XU will be the sixth.
XU spread over 35 acre land in Pipili, Puri 60
km east of the capital Bhubaneswar will cater to
over 5000 students with over 400 teaching faculty
members and 500 non- teaching staff.
Estimated costs for the setup was said to be
around Rs 33 cr, but Fr Fernandes was recently
reported as saying that the cost had escalated to
Rs 40 cr in the past four years.
The Jesuits have long been known to impart a
high quality of education in India since the 16th
century. The many colleges they have set up
across the country have all been functioning under
government-run universities.
Diana Fernandes
