Dr. Yaj Medury is the first vice chancellor of the newly established Bennett University (BU) in Greater Noida, an hour’s drive from central Delhi. The campus is designed by RSP Architects, a renowned Singapore-based firm. BU has a dedicated corpus of Rs.800 crore for investment in infrastructure and human resources of which Rs.240 crore has been expended for partial construction of the new varsity’s engineering and business management schools. Newspeg. This state-of-the-art private institution launched by Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd (BCCL) — the holding company of India’s top-ranked dailies including the Times of India, Economic Times, television channels Times Now, ET Now and over a dozen periodicals — is sited on a 68-acre campus, and will commence its first academic session in July 2016, with an intake of 60 students into an MBA programme and 240 into undergraduate engineering programmes. Tuition fees range between Rs.3.5-6 lakh per annum. Direct talk. “BU is promoted by BCCL whose Times of India and Economic Times are trusted brands across India. Moreover, the company has already earned a good reputation for promoting high quality education initiatives such as Teach for India, Newspaper in Education, TimesPro for professional training, and the Times School of Journalism. The launch of Bennett therefore, is a natural progression for BCCL. We are confident of providing our students a premium learning experience comparable internationally, thanks to highly-qualified research-oriented faculty recruited from globally renowned institutions, including IITs and IIMs. We have also signed an academic collaboration with Babson College, ranked #1 for entrepreneurship education by US News & World Report,” says Medury. Selected by Vineet Jain, managing director and CEO of BCCL, after a global search to head the Times Group’s ambitious foray into formal higher education, Medury seems more than equal to the job of establishing BU as one of the country’s top-ranked private universities ab initio. Medury’s career graph of 31 years includes administrative roles at the British Council, New Delhi (education division); the Delhi-based Educational Consultants India Ltd; a brief stint as the first vice chancellor of the consistently top-ranked Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu; chief operating officer of the education initiatives of the Jaypee Group, for whom he operationalised the Jaypee University of Information Technology at Waknaghat (Himachal Pradesh), Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, and Jaypee Institute of Engineering Technology, Guna (Madhya Pradesh). Future plans. According to Medury, this new 21st century multi-disciplinary varsity when fully operational will host 13,000 undergrad and postgrad students across its schools of engineering, management, design, law, media, public policy and liberal arts with most of the faculty resident on campus. “It is a tradition within the Times of India Group for all our publications and ventures — Times of India, Economic Times, Times Now, Radio Mirchi etc — to be ranked #1 in their respective market segments. I have no doubt that given the generous investment BCCL has made in BU, within a decade, we will be ranked #1 in the league tables of EducationWorld, India Today and…
