B-schools that filed their petition in the Supreme Court against AICTE’s (All India Council for Technical Education) notification of December 28, 2010 are now seeking out-of-court settlement. But AICTE is not willing to give up.

In February 2011, the EPSI (Education Promotion Society of India), Jaipuria Group of Institutions and AIMS (Association of Indian Management Schools) challenged the notification of AICTE issued on December 28, 2010, which reduced the autonomy of PGDM (Post Graduate Diploma in Management) institutes on determining the fee structure, syllabus, admissions and examination.

In its notification, AICTE had prescribed new norms for B-schools in India, which the institutes were not ready to accept. B-schools rejected the rule, which stated that admission to the PGDM programs should be done through CAT (Common Admission Test), MAT (Management Aptitude Test) or other state level exams held by the government.

AICTE had stated that state governments should conduct admission to PGDM programs through a competent body.

EPSI discussed the issue with AICTE in a meeting and sought for an out of court compromise to which AICTE refused. EPSI proposed that if AICTE withdraws its notification, they will also withdraw their case. EPSI also suggested AICTE that management institutes can frame a voluntary code of conduct and introduce the same.

Sources from AICTE revealed that it is a government body to regulate standards and quality of technical education. The notification released was in the public interest. So AICTE will not compromise in any way.

ACITE released the notification about monitoring the admission process and fee of the PGDM institutes. The step was taken as a number of students complained that PGDM institutes lack a proper redressal mechanism. So to solve such problems the notification was released.

The Supreme Court in July this year passed a stay order on AICTE notification on PGDM autonomy and asked these B-schools to admit students for the academic year 2013-14 using any of the 5 national entrance tests – CAT, MAT, XAT, CMAT and ATMA.

B-schools opposed the AICTE’s notification and argued that by admitting students through these exams, the quality of the batch will get diluted and that a fair comparison cannot be done as these exams are of different difficulty levels.

AICTE also prescribed that a committee of the concerned state government should approve the fee for PGDM, PGCM and PGDM executive programs. To this, B-schools argued that how can AICTE fix the fee for PGDBM executive programs when they are not recognized by it.

Also that limiting the fee may affect the quality of faculty members, infrastructure and above all may lead to melancholy of capitation fees.

Some B-schools expressed that colleges will not be able to fill seats if they do not have a good reputation. For example, AICTE allows many institutes having an intake capacity of 240 students to commence management programs without faculty, proper infrastructure or library but they have to be satisfied with only 60-100 students. This resulted states to release a circular prescribing that institutes could enroll students even without the required scores.

AICTE claims that management institutes are challenging the notification because they want to con students and the notification will restrict them from doing so.

India has about 4000 business schools with 350000 seats. All educational institutes such as architecture, engineering and hotel management are regulated by AICTE norms.

Source: Business Standard

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