AICTE: A Dragon to be Slayed,
If Business Education in India is to be Saved
Page - 2
It is incontestable that the
largest recruiters of business graduates are obviously business entities. And,
as "consumers", business and their associations have a much larger stake in the
quality of business education in India than AICTE or the Ministry of
HRD. It is, therefore, clear that organizations like CII, FICCI and ASSOCHAM are
the entities who should be the arbiters to determine the quality of business
schools in the country. There could be a regulatory entity primarily promoted by
these associations to oversee the quality of business education in the country
and to bring forth periodically such changes as are required to reflect the
changing business environment.
AICTE should leave business
education in the country alone. The industry associations and the market will
ensure that those schools which deliver quality management education are
rewarded and those which fall short punished.
I also wish to highlight another
issue which, in fact, may be prevailing in most contexts in the country where
discretionary powers vest with small groups of people who oversee or monitor or
approve any activity, be it in the public or private sector. Economists call
them "rent-seekers". There are several instances of lack of probity among AICTE
teams who visit private, self-financing institutions, both engineering and
business management programmes, to assess their eligibility for approval. But
then, why single out AICTE teams alone? They are a microcosm of the Indian
society; after all, it is not for nothing that we have been 'earning' very low
score for transparency globally!
The irony is that AICTE's moronic
rules are to protect the students from unscrupulous people who promote colleges
purely as business propositions and to keep the facilities and other offerings
updated. Under the existing scheme of things, nothing of the kind happens. The
students, in fact, are the victims of a double whammy: those who want to screw
the system do it anyway (and thereby, shortchanging the students) and those who
are committed to set up world-class schools are intimidated (if not disallowed)
by the mindless rules and regulations.
For Engineering Colleges, AICTE
approval is mandatory whereas the Business Schools appear to be in a
'no-man's-land'. No one is certain, despite the annual ritual of threatening
dire consequences by AICTE, whether those schools which offer PGPM without
seeking approval of AICTE, or affiliation with a University, or offering only
one-year diploma programmes can be legally disabled. This explains how fine
institutions like ISB, Hyderabad (the only business school ranked among the 50
best in the world) and GLIM (Great Lakes Institute of Management), Chennai got
established without having to follow the outdated university curriculum or
processes. Both may have received show-cause notices from AICTE why action
should not be taken to close down their facilities!
