Draft report of

11.4 Inter University Centres
Inter University Centres were established by UGC to provide common facilities to a group of universities which can not be replicated due to high cost involvements. The IUCs are recognised as Centres of excellence and their main task is capacity building for human resource development. The significant contribution of the IUCs has been empowerment of the University community and enabling the use of front ranking world-class research facilities, which are not available elsewhere. They all have maintained high level of achievements over the years and the activities need to be continued and enhanced. The IUCs have brought into focus a new dimension of research in the Indian scenario that is of cooperation and synergy between large number of faculty and students from different universities, colleges and national institutes. The contribution of the IUCs have been recognized by peer groups e.g., the recently prepared INSA-IASc document on higher education and research mentions that establishment of the three research IUCs as one of the successful UGC initiatives in the past decade or two to upgrade science education in Universities. Three of the six IUCs, namely, IUAC, IUCAA and UGC-DAE CSR are primarily research based and have been providing quality in research. Other three IUCs, viz, CEC, NAAC and INFLIBNET are primarily serving quality of excellence. The National Centres, viz, WRIC, Crystal Growth Centre, MST Radar Facility and IUCHSS have been serving the university community of researchers while being managed by corresponding universities.

Although there is a common thread of providing service to the university community by all IUCs, each has some distinct features and missions and has achievements to its credit that merit individual mention. These are enumerated below.