Institutes refute Shunglu

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, (IIM-Ahmedabad) and IIM-Bangalore submitted their responses on the findings of the Shunglu Committee.

The one-man Shunglu Committee, appointed by former Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, is yet to submit its report to the ministry on the Common Admission Test question paper leak in November last year. The 106-page report, prepared by retired Comptroller and Auditor-General V K Shunglu, had endorsed the fee cut order.

IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore submitted their responses to the report to Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh prior to a meeting of the chairmen and directors of all the six IIMs here.

In its report, the Shunglu Committee said in the last 13 years, the fees of IIM-Ahmedabad had gone up 22 times, those of IIM-Calcutta 23 times, IIM-Bangalore 16 times and IIM-Lucknow 20 times.

In its response, IIM-Ahmedabad countered that the National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986, had sought an increase in fees for higher education.

IIM-Ahmedabad said the policy, approved by Parliament, had emphasised that increased reliance on fees and user charges was important to not only reduce the burden on the state's resources, but also create a greater sense of responsibility in the educational system.

"Fee increases were also endorsed in a Unesco conference paper to which Joshi had said that major efforts had been mounted for mobilisation of resources and it has been recommended that while the government should make a firm commitment to higher education, institutions of higher education should make efforts to raise their own resources by raising the fee levels, encouraging private donations and by generating revenues through consultancy and other activities," IIM-Ahmedabad clarified, quoting the former minister.

The Shunglu Committee had also opined that the memorandum of association of the institute made it clear that the core authority lies with the Centre with regard to the appointment and administration of the IIMs.

In its response, IIM-Ahmedabad said: "The committee's observation does not reflect the past practice and convention in this regard. Being an autonomous institution, the authority lies with the Board of Governors for appointments and administration. For instance, till 2002, the director was selected by the board and his appointment was approved by the Government of India in consultation with the state government."

In various sections of the report, the committee had also blamed IIM-Ahmedabad for not furnishing adequate information to the committee representatives. This was denied by the institutes' officials.

The committee had also observed that staff costs in all the IIMs were high because none of the IIMs were working to recognised capacity with regard to their post-graduate management programmes (PGP).

In its response, IIM-Ahmedabad said the concept of recognised capacity in IIMs involve not only the availability of faculty work units, but also physical infrastructure, including the hostel capacity, classroom capacity etc.

To argue that the institute was using elastic capacity definition amounted to inadequate understanding of the ground realities, IIM-Ahmedabad said in its response.

While the Shunglu Committee pointed out that the student-faculty ratio has never been maintained in the IIMs, IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore denied it.

"Even institutes abroad, such as the Harvard Business School, which is regarded as a beacon, does not have this kind of a faculty-student ratio. There the ratio was 1:9 in 2003, compared with around 1:8 at IIM-Ahmedabad, which is also being improved on," the institute said in its report.