C Raj Kumar: Contributions to the Higher Education

Imagining a private liberal arts university creating a space for itself amongst institutes of higher learnings like IITs, IIMs and central universities was literally impossible, until 2009, when O P Jindal Global University was set up. It was a 1998-big-dream that drew a Rhodes scholar with two post-graduate degrees in Law from Oxford and Harvard, C Raj Kumar back home and founded JGU with barely 100 students and 10 faculty. What primarily started as a law university, quickly moved on, in a short span, to add disciplines - postgraduate as well as offering PhD - for instance, on public administration and public policy, which internationally have been the forte of foreign institutes only. Carving a niche for itself in Indian academic airspace has been meticulously done by Raj Kumar - a university that today has over 5,000 students and nearly 600 faculty of international academic excellence. JGU today is one of the top ranking universities in Asia.