Hyderabad: The education city in Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh, is expected to be among the first hu-bs to be completed by 2018.
The Andhra Pradesh government has planned to set up about nine hubs - called the navaratnas — within the capital city, dedicated to entertainment, education, health, justice, economy sectors, among others. Among all of these, the government has said that the education city would be the first to be completed. The government is already writing to several top notch institutions to set up campuses in the education hub of Amaravati.
AP is also set to pass the Private Universities Bill in the Assembly which will pave the way for private entities to set up full-fledged universities in the state. The government is already in talks with varsities like Amity, Lovely Professional University to set up campuses in the capital.
Not only these, institutions like the SRM and Vellore Institute of Techn-ology of Tamil Nadu, which have a huge Telugu population, are also being invited to set up campuses. However, national institutions like the IIT, IIM and NIT will not figure in the capital city for they have already been allotted to other cities in the state.
The Naidu government is not willing to stop at just Indian institutions. The government has already held talks with foreign universities like the Cambridge and National University of Singapore (NUS) to set up campuses in the state.
Cambridge University has also in principle agreed to partner with the AP government but the modalities are yet to be finalised considering there is no legal framework for foreign universities to set up teaching campuses in the country without taking profits back home. This, however, is likely to change by the time the capital comes up.
