Deemed-to-be university tag to benefit students of FTII, Pune and SRFTI, Kolkata

Deemed-to-be university tag to benefit students of FTII, Pune and SRFTI, Kolkata

Institutes will launch UG and doctoral programmes besides participating in NIRF Rankings and integrating with the ABC 

Rajlakshmi.Ghosh@timesofindia.com 05.05.2025 

Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata, are set to begin a new innings as they have been recently granted deemed-tobe university status. This will enable them to award degrees instead of just diplomas, as well as conduct doctoral programmes and research. The institutes have been granted the status under Section 3 of the UGC Act following the recommendation made by the University Grants Commission (UGC). 

Besides exercising greater autonomy and launching innovative academic programmes, the institutes will participate in the NIRF Rankings and integrate with the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) which will make them at par with global norms and help students with study abroad opportunities. The new programmes will be aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, and at the undergraduate level, the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) with a research track will be introduced. Transforming courses Speaking to Education Times , Dhiraj Singh, director, FTII, Pune, says, “We are excited with the institute being granted deemed-to-be university status.

It will give us the opportunity to progress under NEP 2020 that provides for a lot of flexibility and innovation. We intend to leverage that for quality film and television education. Our first priority is to connect and transform our existing courses into degree courses. This will be done keeping in mind the unique brand of FTII and the special needs of cinema and television education in India.” He further adds, “We hope to offer degree courses under the new prospectus, given all the permissions are obtained from the relevant bodies. 

It is still new for us, and more details are awaited.” FTII was set up in the year 1960 when it was known as the ‘Film Institute of India’. In 1971, it came to be known as the ‘Film and Television Institute of India’ (FTII) and thereafter began inservice training programmes for Doordarshan. The Television Training wing, which was earlier operating in New Delhi, moved to Pune in 1974. Thereafter, the institute became fully aided by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. In 2017, the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) granted equivalence to the institute’s six PG Diploma programmes with master’s degree. Named after filmmaker Satyajit Ray, Kolkata-based SRFTI became the second national institute for cinema education. Set up in 1995 by the government of India as an autonomous academic institution under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the institute currently offers three-year postgraduate programmes in cinema in six specialisations of filmmaking and two-year postgraduate programmes in Electronics and Digital Media in six specialisations. Discussing the impact of the institutes’ new status, Samiran Datta, director (I/c), SRFTI says, “While both FTII and SRFTI are national institutes where the emphasis is more on practicebased training rather than theoretical learning, to date, we did not have degree-conferring space. 

Now, with the deemedto-be university status, the scope for research under PhD programmes will widen which will also expand scholars’ knowledge base and prevent them from venturing overseas for their doctoral degrees.” While SRFTI’s main campus is in Kolkata, the institute also has under its wing the Film and Television Institute at Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh where master’s programmes are conducted. “Plans are on to start our flagship UG programme — a bachelor’s of Cinema Art – at the Northeast campus based on the FYUP model, in which students will pursue common courses on the basics of cinema, theatre and allied art in the initial years along with the continuation of humanities and social sciences. Students will thereafter specialise in areas such as film direction, cinematography, editing, sound, animation and cinema.” Emphasising that it will take about a year to make the course operational, Datta further informs that the PhD programmes will, however, be launched from the Kolkata campus in subjects related to animation, documentary, film techniques and cinema. The institute also has on the anvil an integrated 5-year UG-PG programme to help students make a seamless transition.

SRFTI is also on the verge of signing MoUs with foreign film institutes in which its credit-based courses and participation in NIRF will give students more credibility. “We are at the transition phase, as we expand our infrastructure and manpower. Plans are on to recruit a vicechancellor in the near future, besides constituting statute committees as per our deemed-to-be university status,” adds Datta