The University of Calcutta is the first institution of higher education in modern India and was founded on the 24th of January 1857 by a Court of Directors of the East India Company. The reason for setting up Universities in important metropolitan cities (the company also set up universities in Mumbai and Chennai) in India by the East India Company was the Company’s need for efficient manpower to run the country. In the beginning, the Calcutta University was a governing body which controlled the administration of its affiliated colleges, from Lahore to Rangoon. Hence, it was the largest university in India.

Gradually, Post Graduate courses were introduced in the University based on the model of the University of London.

Dr. Fredrick John, the education secretary to the then British Government in India made the first proposal for the University of Calcutta to the British Government. Though this proposal was initially ignored, later on in 1854, a proposal to establish two universities, one in Calcutta and the other in Bombay was accepted.

Thus on 24 January 1857, the Calcutta University Act came into force and a 41-member Senate was formed. This included emminent personalities like Alexander Duff, Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar, Prince Gholam Muhammad, Prasanna Kumar Thakur, and William Gordon Pratt.

Today, it is an affiliate institute and Research University administered by the West Bengal government. It has a number of campuses in College Street, Rajabazar, Alipore and a number of affiliated colleges spread out in greater Calcutta.

Lord Canning, the then Viceroy of India, became the first Chancellor of the Calcutta University whereas Sir James William Colvil, the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, became its Vice-chancellor. The Syndicate of the Calcutta University was constituted on the 30 of January 1858.Though the first meeting of the Senate was held in the Council room of the Calcutta Medical College, later on, all the meetings of the Senate and Syndicate were held in a room of the Writer's Building. A make shift office of the university was started in a few rented rooms in Camac Street.

In 1862, a decision was taken by the Senate to construct a building of its own. Accordingly, the historical Senate Hall was constructed at a cost of Rs. 2,52,221 and inaugurated on 12 March 1873 by holding the convocation of the university.Sir Gurudas Banerjee was the first Indian vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta.

Today, the university includes fifty eight departments, eighteen research centres, more than six hundred and fifty teachers, nearly three thousand non-teaching staff and twelve thousand and four hundred post-graduate students. It provides courses on agriculture arts, commerce, social welfare, business management, education, journalism, library science, engineering, technology, fine arts, music, homescience, law, science, information technology, women's studies, forensicscience, sports, mass communication, counselling. The university has also introduced recent branches like schools for Business Management, Finance, Commerce, Communication, Information Technology, Fashion Designing, Hospitality Management, Biotechnology, Genetics, Robotics, and Nanotechnology and boasts of an alumni spreading across the world.

Recent Achievements:

The university was awarded the ‘five star university’ status by the National Accreditation and Assessment Council in 2001. In a list prepared by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 2004 of the top five hundred instituions of the world, the University of Calcutta is the sole university to feature from India. The other institutions from India on the list are the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.On December 8, 2005, the Indian University Grants Commission declared Calcutta University as a ‘‘University with Potential for Excellence’’. On November 10, 2005, CU was ranked as the 39th university of the world by the The Times Higher Education Supplement. It was the only Indian university to feature in the first fifty with Delhi University being in the first hundred.

Alumni and Unique features:

The university also boasts of a previleged alumni including past presidents of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Nobel Laureates, Rabindranath Tagore, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman and Amartya Sen and a league of international stalwarts like Dr.Ba Maw, the the first Burmese premier under British rule, Muhammad Ali Bogra and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, former Prime Ministers of Pakistan.

Trivia:

• It is the first university which set up a medical school, The Calcutta Medical College in 1835.

• The first college for women in India, the Bethune College was set up in 1879 by the University.

• India’s first homeopathy college was established in 1880. • The first Science College in India was established in 1917.

• The first blind school was set up in 1925.

• The first inhouse university museum in India, The Ashutosh Museum, was founded in 1937. The Asutosh museum is a chest box of Indian art and antiquity and contains an awesome collection of more than25,000 rare antique items

• The Government Arts College was established in 1951.

• The country’s first management institute, Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management or the IISWBM was set up in 1953 .

External Links:

Official website of the University of Calcutta