Students from the Northeast will have a reason not to leave their states and reach Calcutta or other cities for higher studies.
St Xavier’s University, Shillong, will come up in the next three years and the Jesuits of the Kohima region will run the institute.
“Students from the Northeast and from Sikkim come to both the college and the university in Calcutta. Many students from these areas leave for Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, and Bangalore, too, and hence there is a need to start a university to let them stay in their states,” Father J Felix Raj, the vice-chancellor of St Xavier’s University, Calcutta, said on Friday.
The Jesuit fathers run a degree college in Williamnagar near Shillong and another in Aizawl in Mizoram.
“Educational work has been the main thrust of the Jesuit fathers in the Northeast just like anywhere else. We should start universities and not colleges because universities have a wider scope and are more independent,” he said.
The Meghalaya cabinet on November 4 approved the St Xavier’s University Bill, 2020.
The bill was introduced in the Assembly on November 5 and is likely to be passed early next week.
St Xavier’s University Calcutta stands as a model for Jesuit universities in the country.
This will be the third Jesuit university in the country after St Xavier’s University, Calcutta, and Xavier University, Bhubaneswar.
The campus will come up on 35 acres in Shillong, given by local Congress MP Vincent Pala.
Classes should start within three years from the date of passing of the bill, Father Felix Raj said.
The chief minister of Meghalaya, Conrad Sangma, wrote in a letter to Father Felix Raj: “It is wonderful to hear the positive response from the Jesuits on the proposal and idea of setting up a university in Meghalaya.”
Deputy chief minister Prestone Tynsong said at a press conference: “St Xavier’s universities are the most successful universities in the country. The Calcutta Jesuits have established St Xavier’s University Calcutta at New Town in 2017 and it is being run very successfully.”
