It is known that the All India Council For Technical Education (AICTE) as the regulatory organisation for management education is inefficient, ineffective and, often, corrupt. The government is supposed to be looking at replacing it. Some of its senior office-bearers face serious charges.
The AICTE has come out with new regulations on management education. They do not address the real issues of concern for the development of management education. Instead, the regulations give the state governments authority in aspects of management education in their states such as admissions, education year, making a rigid 24-month post-graduate programme mandatory and so on. But they do not address the real issues such as the abysmal quality of many management education institutions, which may or may not be recognised by the AICTE, shortage of trained faculty, poor governance, lack of transparency in the institutions and in the AICTE given that many such institutions are being run as money-making ventures, rigidity in syllabus and curriculum, lack of inspection, absence of annual and objective ratings of institutions and so on.
The AICTE is, by its latest intervention, preparing for yet another scam under the unknowing aegis of the present UPA government. The voluble and hyperactive Human Resources Ministry must intervene, suspend the AICTE (as has been done in similar circumstances with the Medical Council of India), set up a group of eminent people authorised to make the necessary changes until a decision is taken on the regulatory framework for management education.
S L Rao, Bangalore, Former President, All India Management Association