>Premji Foundation to set up institute

>The Azim Premji Foundation, the eponymous non-profit education arm run by the chairman of Wipro Ltd., has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), to set up the Azim Premji School of Education (APSE) in Hyderabad. The school will offer degrees and conduct research in education. The Foundation will make an investment of Rs. 40 crore (Rs. 400 million) over the next five years in the school.

“The Tata Institute of Social Sciences will bring a deeper understanding of social sciences and the developmental sector, while we bring our on-field understanding of education and our relationships with the state governments,” said Dileep Ranjekar, Chief Executive of the Azim Premji Foundation, in a phone interview. The Foundation and TISS will jointly develop the curriculum, and share faculty and student services. Ranjekar also said that the APSE will help TISS take on more students at the Hyderabad campus and offer financial assistance to those who wish to pursue education or research. “In principle, APSE will be very similar to the Azim Premji university, although initially it may have a more academic orientation, while the university has a field orientation,” he said.

APSE will be headed by Lakshmi Lingam who is currently Dean, Research and Development, at TISS in Mumbai. The school will begin its programmes in August this year with about 150 students. The hiring of faculty is complete with some of them shifting from the TISS Mumbai campus. It will operate on the campus of a state government educational institution this year but will later be shifted to the TISS campus in Hyderabad which is currently being set up.

The decade-old Azim Premji Foundation, which received a grant of Wipro shares worth Rs. 8,846 crore (Rs. 88.46 billion) from Premji in December last year, works primarily to improve the quality of education in India. Premji had transferred 213 million of his shares in Wipro, equivalent to an 8.7% stake, to fund the development activities of the Foundation.

The Foundation collaborates with various state governments and has an outreach of over 20,000 schools and 2.5 million children. Last year, the Foundation established the Azim Premji University (APU) in Karnataka, which will launch masters programmes in education, development and teacher education in July this year. It will start with about 200 students, and aims to reach about 3,500 by 2016.

Source: Mint, April 8, 2011